The fact that I have a whole section on my website devoted to FedEx sucking probably tells you a lot about what I think of FedEx.
Today did everything to reinforce that sentiment.
I’ve been waiting for another package sent by Fed Ex. Why? Because no one gave me a choice to choose any other method of shipment except Fed Ex which is what I would choose.
Here’s what I’ve been looking at all day:
You will note that the “estimated” date of delivery is today: 2008-12-08.
You will also notice it is after 5:00 p.m. on 2008-12-08.
You can probably guess that the package is not here.
What I Did
Since I have a lot of experience dealing with Fed Ex, I know that “Estimated Delivery” means absolutely nothing to them. It is just there to placate people.
So when I saw that there was no tracking information updated today, I called the 800-number for Fed Ex and spoke to a representative.
Said representative was completely unhelpful, and clearly uninterested in expending any energy towards finding anything out about what might be going on.
She said, and then when I pressed further, said again that there was nothing in her system to indicate that the package wouldn’t be delivered today.
Notice the nicely slimy way that she put it? It’s not a promise, of course, it’s just her saying “Well, I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be there today!”
Yeah, except that the tracking information from two days ago hasn’t been updated. It was never “arrival scanned” anywhere, and it is not “Out for Delivery” even though the Estimated Delivery date is today.
Could you help me? Could you check with the local hub to see if they have any information? Sure, she could have. But did she? No, she did not.
I kept waiting, I kept refreshing the page. No news.
Around 4:40 p.m. I went out to see if he had left a door tag despite the large sign saying “I AM HERE, I AM WAITING FOR THE PACKAGE” which he has done before.
Actually, what I suspect he does is know that the office closes at 1 p.m. and therefore decides not to bother even coming by. If questioned, he says that he had “run out of door tags” which is why one wasn’t left.
This has happened at least a half dozen times, which strains credulity, especially because one of the times that he claims we were “closed” was during a rummage sale when there was a full parking lot and people were coming in and out of the building all day long.
But he claimed we were “closed” at like 2 p.m.
Right. Sure you actually came by and thought that.
Call Back
So I called FedEx again.
This time the customer support person did call the hub (well, he put me on hold, and then told me that’s what he had done).
The reason for the delay?
Oh, the package isn’t actually out for delivery today. But it should be tomorrow.
Why hasn’t the tracking page been updated?
Oh, see, we have a problem with packages from Dell. “A lot of times the labels fall off.”
That’s an exact quote from the Fed Ex person.
“A lot of times the Dell labels fall off.”
(No explanation, by the way, of why this has happened several times in the past with Apple deliveries, none of which have shown any evidence of label problems.)
Ok, I asked, where is the package? It supposedly left Grove City two days ago, where did it go?
It’s still at Grove City.
He went on to say that he could see on his computer that it hadn’t actually left the Grove City hub.
Me: “So, what’s the point in having this tracking page at all?”
At this point he put on his snooty tech support “OK I’m going to make myself sound very polite to you now and reiterate what I’ve said several times already without actually answering your question” voice.
His salient, frequently reiterated points:
- Dell labels fall off a lot (although he couldn’t say whether that had actually happened in this situation, and if it had, he couldn’t explain to me how he knew where this package was if the package was sitting somewhere without a label on it.
- It should be delivered tomorrow.
- He put a “tracker” on this package. I have no idea what this means, I assume it’s mean to be some kind of internal “flag” in their computer system. I also assume it’s meant to sound impressive to the person on the phone, as if the agent will be personally keeping an eye on the progress of my delivery.
Yeah right.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Please let me choose which company to use, because I will use UPS every single time.
(Disclaimer: I realize that some people have the opposite experience with Fed Ex and UPS, but in 5 years of dealing with both companies here, Fed Ex has been relentlessly awful and unreliable, and UPS has been nearly flawless.)
Update: at 10:33 p.m. they posted a “Delivery Exception” stating “Customer not available or business closed.”
I can state this in no uncertain terms: FedEx lied.
Either they lied when I called them today, or their driver lied when he said I wasn’t there. Either way, they are liars. This was not an “oops mistake”. I was told, point blank, that the package was still in Grove City. Now I am being told that they tried to deliver it, but couldn’t.
One of these explanations is a lie.
I’ll bet you $1,000 that if I went down to the office right now and looked on the door, there would be no door tag. I bet if I ask him again tomorrow he’ll tell me that he “ran out”.
Again.
Update 2008-12-09: At approximately 2:00 p.m. there was a knock on the side door to our building.
It was FedEx.
I know what you’re thinking: “Yay!”
Right?
Wrong.
He had a box from Oriental Trading.
Me: “Do you have a Dell for me?”
Him: “Uh… let me check.”
He went back to the truck and sure enough there’s the computer I’ve been waiting for.
“They had it on the wrong shelf,” he explained.
I told him about the problems I had yesterday, including being told that the labels fall off (the label is fine) and that it was still in Grove City, and that the tracking page said we were closed at 10:30 p.m.
Which I thought would be the end of the story.
Except that he then went on to explain he had it yesterday.
Excuse me?
Yup, he had it, but thought it was supposed to be delivered next door, and they were closed by the time he got here, so he scanned it as “Customer Not Available.”
On the one hand, it’s incompetence (not helped by the fact that the only reason he knew to deliver it today was because he happened to have another package and I asked him about this one).
On the other hand, he apologized for the mistake, and took responsibility for it.
Unlike the folks I’ve talked to on the phone, who, if they did apologize, it was that vacant, meaningless, “the script tells me to apologize here, but really I don’t give a damn about your problems.”
You know the tone, everyone knows the tone.
Anyway, now I have to go setup a Windows machine, which is only slightly more painful than dealing with Fed Ex.