Fed-Ex makes things difficult for the little people
Mar 27, 2009 How To Piss Me Off
Complaining about deliveries is a risky thing in my neighborhood. I’ve heard the stories: someone complains to the post office about their mail going to the wrong house, and doesn’t get mail for a week. Someone complains to UPS or Fed-Ex about an expensive package being left on the steps, and gets no more packages. But I’m going to take a chance and do it anyway. I’ll preface it by saying that I’ve never had any major problems with any deliveries before and all my regular guys are great.
So sadly, I had to send back the great little computer Sony lent me for review. Actually, I was supposed to send it back a few days ago, and Sony made it as easy for me as they possibly could, by including a Fed-Ex return slip in the box. I swapped out the old slip for the new one, resealed the little plastic pouch, taped the box shut, and got online to figure out where I had to bring the box. Then I remembered that I needed to add insurance. The box was worth about $1,400 and I wasn’t going to let it out of my sight until it was insured.
I won’t go into all of the boring details. I just want to say this: Fed-Ex is not set up for occasional users who don’t have accounts. There is nothing intuitive about it and there are no clear instructions for someone trying to make a return and get insurance with a label from someone else’s account. Without an account I had trouble just getting an actual person on the phone.
This morning the driver had no idea what I needed to do to insure the package and reluctantly made a couple of calls (customer service had told me the driver would be bringing something for me to sign). He really wanted me to just hand the box over, but he couldn’t tell me how much Fed-Ex would pay if they lost it. So eventually we got everything squared away, and then he told me that it was my lucky day. That if he had been in more of a hurry he would have told me to go back upstairs and figure it all out for myself. Nice. I told him that as someone who has never had to send a Fed-Ex package before, it was a really frustrating experience. He blamed it on the online and phone people, saying that for drivers it’s all about numbers and they don’t have time to do anything but drop off and pick up. That may be true, but at least the customer service guy wasn’t acting like he was doing me a big favor.
So Fed-Ex, let me just say this. If you don’t need people like me as customers, I actually do understand. There may be an economy of scale thing going on. It may not be worth it to you to deal with people like me. I send about a half dozen packages a month from the post office and I’d love to find an easier way, but you may just be set up for businesses that spend a lot more than I do. That’s fine. But if you do want to get people like me on board, you need to make it easier. And nicer.
Ugh. Almost makes me look forward to my trip to the post office tomorrow. Almost.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: Fed-Ex, Post Office, Sony Vaio Lifestyle Computer, UPS
I only pity the driver a little (JUST a little!) because he has to drive through Midtown traffic on a daily basis… and be fast about it. I’m glad I just deal with the post office. I wouldn’t know the first thing about using UPS or Fed-Ex.
Fed-Ex can be really bad even if you do use them on a regular basis. Let me tell a brief story. My husband had a small Ebay business about 2 yrs ago. To make it short, he bought items from someone over Ebay to sell in a store. My husband actually talked to the person, and the person whom he bought the items from was a nice person. So, anyway, my husband had squared everything up with Fed- Ex and paid for what he bought. When the Fed- Ex people came, the lady decided to send some extra stuff ( without my husbands consent.) These items that I think she was having difficulty getting rid of. To make the story short, guess who had to pay this shipping bill? Because the guy for some reason had extra labels, he authorized the sale ( I do not know HOW this happened.) Anyway, Fed- Ex made us pay about $300 for items that my husband didn’t order. It was billed to the credit card. They were complete asses. As a result, I personlly avoid the use of Fed- Ex. My husband tried everything to get the charges removed, but could not do anything about it in the end. The lesson, avoid using Fed-EX.
@Jen – Yeah, that sounds about right! That’s ridiculous.
What drives me the most nuts is when they leave expensive stuff on my steps. We came back from trick-or-treating to find a $300 camera on the steps. Halloween is really popular in our ‘hood, and with hundreds of people passing by our house in the two hours we were gone, I could not believe the package was still there.
Another time I found a Fed-Ex tag saying that a package had been left under the window, behind the garbage can. Guess what, no package! I didn’t really give Fed-Ex a chance to correct that one. I called the company that had sent the package and they dealt with it.
Sounds to me like the driver was doing you a big favor: helping you with something that’s not really his job, but in fact YOUR job. His job is to pick up and deliver packages, and yes, provide some ancillary assistance in that matter… but helping you figure out insurance is not among his duties. Sure he should do it if possible just because he represents the company, and it’s just a nice thing to do as a human…and he shouldn’t make a big deal about it…but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were giving off bad vibes and he perhaps felt a little defensive or unappreciated.