I want to know more about the monkey test
The only problem I have with FedEx is that they routinely bait and switch me with delivery dates. Something will ship on Wednesday. I’ll check the tracking on Thursday and it will say that it’s coming Tuesday. Cool. On Sunday, they’ll email me and say the package is going to be delivered on Monday. Then Monday comes and goes and the package is never on the truck for delivery and then they’ll say it’s delayed and coming Tuesday. Like why are you making yourself look bad? Don’t tell me it’s coming a day early just to then fuck that up. You’re going out of your way to piss me off at that point.
UPS on the other hand will just tell me a package is coming on Tuesday and low and behold, there it is on the delivery truck on Tuesday.
They claimed my package was delivered and it was nowhere to be found. I followed up and they just sent back the delivery confirmation. Said it was dropped off at a reception desk. My place didn’t have a reception desk. Their CS went nowhere.
I ended up making a BBB complaint and whadooyaknow, I get a call from a supervisor at the local DC informing me that the package was actually delivered to a hotel two blocks away and they would retrieve it and redeliver it for me and apologizing for it taking so long. I had already gotten a reship from the vendor in the meantime. (Bonus, I ended up with twice the product)
It’s like the packages get to the last mile warehouse a day early, so the system says “it’s here, let’s send it a day early”. Then some idiot in either the warehouse or on the truck sees the package and says “oh this wasn’t scheduled to be delivered till tomorrow? Fuck that, it’s not going on the truck till tomorrow”
Happened so many times for me with FedEx now, I just disregard any updates they send.
Cheap labor equals cheap results.
In my neighborhood, they misdeliver a package at least 2 times a week.
I’ll see the FB group, so and so, your package is at my house or does anyone recognise this porch
They never fuck up my house, but man do they fuck up the rest of the hood.
Honestly I prefer usps now… I worked as a driver for FedEx express and when I helped on the belt with packages the loaders would say fragile is French and I don’t understand French while rolling the packages.
Thought fragile was Italian. Frah-jee-lee.
Heard that too. Lol
Once Fedex lost a gait trainer to help my disabled daughter learn to walk. They then fought me for 6 months to stonewall me on getting reimbursed. When I was finally going to get my money back (it was quite expensive), it shows up at my house broken and now my daughter was too big for it anyway. I did find a local therapy center that said they could use some of for parts for their other trainers at least, but I was out nearly a month’s pay. Fuck Fedex forever.
They “lost” a $1300 computer monitor I was returning because it had multiple dead pixels. Tracking was weird, there was a “delivery exception” and it showed up 3 days later than originally expected.
Monitor company said the box arrived empty.
FedEx wouldn’t even talk to me about it because I wasn’t the one who ordered the shipping, Monitor company was. Monitor company accused me of sending them the empty box, routing me to their fraud department, unwilling to act as an intermediary to FedEx.
Had to dispute the charge with my credit card to get it resolved, a process that took about 4 months. Thank god for AmEx.
Having handled RMA disputes in a previous job if FedEx shows a delivery exception we’d generally trust that it was FedEx’s fuckup. Glad you could get it sorted one way or another but that really freaking sucks
Yeah these guys outsourced all their CS reps to India, so trying to get through to someone helpful was like talking to a brick wall.
At least now there’s 2 companies I know to never again use.
Narrator: they didn’t deliver the package.
FedEx is so bad that if they’re the only shipping option for an online order, I go and find a different vendor.
It depends on the driver really. The guy on our route is great. The one for my mom is the worst.
I’m fairly sure that at least FedEx ground is all contracted drivers. They’re kinda like a franchise that owns a particular route.
I’ve had packages delivered to my bin before now. Without telling me.
With USPS and UPS it doesn’t depend on the driver, they all get the job done and do so safely. Meanwhile I’ve almost been killed on my bike by FedEx drivers multiple times. Has never happened around UPS and USPS trucks. I once watched a FedEx driver pull up in front of my apartment and literally locked eyes with the guy before he pulled away again and my tracking updated to “package undeliverable”. They’re over-worked, under-paid, under-trained, and it shows.
Guess that’s the difference between union and non-union employees.
I find it absolutely adorable when people who have never experienced Purolator - they claim to be a package company - complain about any package shipping issue.
- You want invisible buildings? Purolator can’t see 35-storey buildings rising high above a sea of bungalows next to a massive landmark.
- You want customized delivery? If your building has a blue box system FUCK YOU they’re gonna need a signature today and you’re gonna have to beat them to the truck to give it.
- you want careful handling? I think they use packages as ramps to get out of the snow or over speed bumps
- you want friendly service? They’re just pissed you burst out of the bushes to beat them back to the truck
- safe pick-up of the package they can’t seem to deliver? Get out near the airport where it’ll probably be out in the ditch, but be there during the convenient hours of 2 and 4, week-days, and you can fight the thieves for your stuff.
i just don’t know what keeps these guys in business.
I think these guys operate in Australia as fastway
I seriously did not realize Purolator was still around. My dad worked for them 40 odd years ago, and quit on the spot, with kids and a wife at home, because of how awful they were (called and checked with my mom first, who was supportive).
They still operate in Canada.
I had a tablet that stopped working under warranty. Printed the return label and dropped it into a Purolator box. Later realized I had printed the wrong label. Called them with the exact box location and time that I dropped it off. They couldn’t find it anywhere, so essentially the driver stole it. THEY are the thieves after your package!
Just today, FedEx said they delivered my two packages from eBay. I looked at the confirmation picture and it’s not even my house! Turns out, they delivered it two doors down to the wrong house. Fortunately, I have an honest neighbor and she brought them to me.
This isn’t the first time this has happened.
I’ve given up on Purolator.
I just contact customer support/the seller and tell them all the steps I took (filling out my complete address, and on the day of, contacting them with my buzzer number), and tell them that I didn’t receive my package despite being home all day. I also didn’t receive their “sorry we missed you” sticky note anywhere. And no missed calls for the buzzer.
They often try to tell me the package is at a pickup point…I tell them that that’s not the address I entered into their system, it’s not the one that you put on the package, and you need to tell Purolator to send it to my address, or they’re going to return it to you/the sender.
This worked for my $1,000 package, thankfully. It didn’t work for my ~$50 packages. So that got sent back to the sender and I got a full refund. And I won’t be buying from them again unless they stop using Purolator.
Meanwhile, Amazon will drop off $200 packages at my doorstep without a signature – the way I want it! Lol
Purolator said they needex me to print out a form saying I authorize a drop off without a signature. I told them the driver is never going to see it because they don’t enter my building’s lobby let alone come up to my apartment. They said to do it anyway and it’d be fine. When I told them it said missed delivery again despite me following their instructions, they stopped replying to my support ticket…lol
I’ve only heard of Purolator as an automotive filter brand, of which is about the same basic and minimally-achieved OEM specs as FRAM. I guess I should just avoid anything with that name altogether.
Purolator is a bastard company I always freak out when I realize my online order defaulted to Purolator from the shipper’s end. I’d literally send more money so it can be anything else.
Not shilling for FedEx but FedEx has come to my house rang my doorbell and stood there for 1 min and I’ve never seen any other company do this.
Sounds worse than UPS. I know that if I’m supposed to get something from on a Saturday, that it won’t be coming until Monday. Every fucking time “business closed”. I dont live in a fucking business.
I cannot impress upon you all how much I loathe FedEx. I feel like they go out of their way to mess things up.
FedEx lost a $500k case of equipment for the service techs who maintain the instruments we use at work. They work nationwide and have two of these cases for the entire country, they keep thousands of labs running. FedEx just… lost it. Eventually it was found a few weeks later or something. The cost is not really a big deal, it is basically just instrument components they use to verify the running components, but they’re the components that all instruments are compared to, so they can’t just put together another case as it suits them. There’s extra testing that goes in to make sure these components are exactly to spec.
Still better than OnTrac somehow.
It is usually a driver who has too many packages or doesn’t care, both cases are an issue with the company itself.
Yep know a guy at FedEx and they leave those notes when the package never made it to the truck but they have a contract to deliver in a certain time frame. So they put the blame on the customer as a strategy of cooking the metrics.
I had a FedEx driver the other day tell me that they separate packages into multiple deliveries sometimes even though they’re all being dropped off all at once for the same reason. Cook the metrics so it looks like they’re making more deliveries in a certain timeframe.
USPS does that shit here, too. They mark stuff "Delivered"and only bring it 2-3 days later. Cooking the metrics, I assume.
Uni Uni likes to use “act of God” as the reason for failed delivery LOL
That explains a lot actually.
I’ve lived in several different areas of my city, and even moved to a different county and lived in three different places in the new county. Unless I have beat the odds and gotten the same driver each time I’ve been unlucky to use fedex (usually not by choice), I’d lean more toward it’s a company problem and the drivers are merely a symptom (or victim).
Anecdotally, I’ve never heard horror stories about FedEx like I’ve heard about Amazon, and yet Amazon still does a decent job with deliveries; not perfect, but orders of magnitude better than FedEx. That tells me how much worse it must be to work at FedEx.
I worked for FedEx for a year and a half almost 20 years ago.
Shower doors were called rain sticks because they all sounded like it and we’d just send the box on. If it was leaking glass, we’d tape it up first. Aquarium fish got liquified after the box spilled and the bag broke on the fast belt. Saw gallons of bull semen spilled once. “Human tissue” spilled from “poorly” taped coolers a few times. Lots of broken golf clubs. All kinds of shit just lost from broken/crushed/mangled boxes. I know it got pocketed by a few people if no one was looking and small enough. Heck, I know a person who mysteriously had 3 broken iPod packages in a single shift. There was an angry dude that used to stomp on expensive shit like dell boxes for shits and giggles.
And that was a decent job … We had a 20hr/wk guaranteed minimum and full benefits.
It’s amazing the difference a union makes for customer satisfaction isn’t it?
Note: USPS & UPS are both unionized.
This. FedEx drivers get wrung, squeezed and micromanaged every second of every day. Pay someone a living wage, set reasonable expectations, and stand back. The job will get done right the first time.
UPS - Union, drivers are the MOST senior positions and get about 150k salary (I think they’re hourly? With really really really good holiday and OT) with great benefits (afaik). Everything is insured, and drivers are generally held to incredibly high standards.
FedEx - ground delivery drivers are not union. They aren’t even employees. They’re independent contractors so that FedEx can save money with MINIMAL liability. Drivers own their own route and trucks, and have to pay for everything. It’s basically a mini franchise and you do not make very much, there are no benefits.
These companies are NOT the same at all.
I had no idea about FedEx! Whenever someone sends us a package via FedEx, it’s always delayed 1-2 days from the delivery date, regardless of the service level. This explains a lot.
More times than not they have faked deliveries for me. Sit beside door all day, no knock, no ring, nothing. Then look outside and there’s a we missed you slip
My fed ex people like to put my big/heavy packages right in front of my glass door that very obviously opens out and not in, which blocks my ability to open the door. 😡
I’ve never thought about that as being a vulnerability of storm doors. I guess you’d better leave it propped open on days when you’re expecting a package.
(If it’s not a storm door — i.e. if it doesn’t have another door behind it — IMO whoever installed it fucked up.)
It never occurred to me that they are called storm doors. Thanks!
Eh that’s not specific to fedex. Mostly seems to be regional; all the carriers do that shit somewhere
Fedex sucks in general. This box contains 7000 bucks worth of laser cutter/ Box has been handled so harshly that its starting to come open. Not to mention they ignored the this side up part.
Used to deliver for Amazon. Fragile, handle with care, this side up, lay flat, team lift, don’t stack, all those mean nothing to the warehouse workers or most of the drivers. It’s so chaotic in there and nobody has time to treat packages carefully.
This has been the case for decades, everywhere.
People, package your shit properly or pay the extra amount to ship it specially.
Yepp. I work in shipping, and if you’re not comfortable throwing the box as hard as you can at a wall, you shouldn’t be comfortable shipping it.
So anything more valuable or less impact resistant than a rubber duck should not be shipped? No computer parts, no art, no glassware or porcelain, no tools more complicated than a hammer, and even then the goons might break the handle?
What is the point of your profession? A pittance in, emissions and waste out?
Pretty sure they meant the package, proper bubble wrapping would handle the abuse. That’s on the person boxing it all up.
Generally trying to stay alive, pay rent, afford healthcare, maybe care for their family, for the employees. Blame the massive corporations trying to keep costs as low as possible but trying to have the least amount of drivers delivering the most amount of packages at the lowest pay possible.
I’ve wrapped plenty of sensitive electronics that I’d be comfortable throwing at a wall. Get a larger box than you think you need, some foam wrapping/bubble wrap from another package and use that to form a protective core. Fill the rest of the box with lightly crumpled scrap paper, or packing peanuts if you have them. It ain’t rocket science.
You just have to assume in the first truck the package will sit underneath seven other heavy packages, while the second truck will be completely empty as your package rattles around and bangs against the walls. Anything else is foolishness, you know damn well those trucks aren’t individually fastening every box for a couple euros of gross revenue per delivery.
Just wrap it in bubble wrap.
In part because a large fraction are bullshit.
I have seen boxes with ‘Open carefully, do not use a knife’ on the outer box when there was another set of cardboard boxes inside protecting the product. Oh yeah, real glad I didn’t cut the tape with my blade that’s not long enough to fully cut even one layer of cardboard.
I have also seen a label “delicate product, fold carefully” on fucking denim jackets.
When everything is ‘fragile’ nothing is. If you won’t pay for a packaging engineer then pay for actual special handling.
Just want to shift the blame here: that culture is set by management. The likelihood of damaging any given item to the extent that a claim is made is low enough that throughput is prioritized for profit. It’s a shitty statistics game and your “fragile this side up” means nothing.
I threw boxes for FedEx for a while at an airport. And yeah, “nonconveyable” freight (oversize/oddly shaped/overweight/hazmat) gets handled differently and holy shit is it a nightmare simply because its isn’t easily stackable. Overweight? Yeah, we just tipped that out of the can and let it fall so we could roll it onto the low belt and into the next can. Over/oddly sized? If you’re lucky it got set aside and shoved on top. If not, it got crushed by whatever got thrown on top.
And sidenote: that box looks great, especially if it went through more than one ramp sort.
What did you do with stuff labeled hazmat?
That all got shifted with the non-conveyables (noncons). You’d have to be “certified” to put it in a can.
We tried not to spill the vats of bull semen and human tissue, but both happened at least once.
That’s what happens when people don’t want to pay for deliveries.
Do you mean free shipping a la Amazon? Because I’ll be honest: I work shipping and Amazon delivery is probably one of the best delivery services available right now, as fucked as it is.
UPS is great
DHL is great
FedEx is the fucking handy man of Satan. Fuck them, everything they represent, and fuck their mothers. And their mother’s mother. Piece of shit useless ass scum bag company.
FedEx forged my signature. Very lucky that I got my shit, but the company paid extra for me to sign, FedEx called and verified I’d have to be home, they didn’t show up the right day, and the next day randomly showed up and left the item after “I” signed. It wasn’t even someone else in the house that signed. Just a blatantly forged sig by the delivery man.
Nah, Amazon delivers to the wrong address like 30% of the time. Very far from what I consider acceptable. No amount of reporting and “placing a pin on a map” fix the issue. Good thing my neighborhood isn’t full of thiefs (that I’m aware of).
I don’t use UPS or Fedex as much as Amazon, but for the times my packages did went through them, they never delivered to the wrong address.
i was reading about shipping fragile things by USPS…
every forum i found, of people that ship antiques and such, is that marking it “fragile” guarantees that it will get destroyed in transit.
i’ve only tried it once… we packed the thing super nice, and it was completely destroyed…. in was impossible to do on accident… even if they had treated it like a regular package, it would’ve been destroyed.
but, treat employees like shit, pay them shit, and they’re going to be malicious….All I see is a packaged
yousomeone failed to pack and ship properly. If you want white glove service, then you have to pay for white glove service.
Obviously screw FedEx, but why the hell is the # symbol part of the door code? It’s just asking for this to happen.
You press the # to start writing the code on Yale doorman, or to lock the door
Ohh, I see. That makes it more clear than saying it’s part of the code
I guess its like one of those digilocks
where people always wrote the codes as “C1234” even though C is just a reset button that puts all the pins back into place so a code can be entered. It’s easier to tell people its C1234 than saying it’s 1234, but press C first.
Or better yet:
“It’s 1234. If that doesn’t work, press C then 1234.”
Is that better? I’ve had email replies fail to pick up the latter half of sentences. I wouldn’t trust it in physical instructions!
Yeah, usually it’s described like “press pound, then…” to avoid confusion.
Yeah delivery has become such a fucking shitshow. I shelled out the money for a PO Box, which seems like the only solution in the U.S., because in my experience FedEx and UPS are not functioning companies; they’re scammers that take money from corporations to lose packages.
Guess who USPS new PMG comes from…
Up until about 6 months ago or so, in my area FedEx was the best of the delivery services in my area by far. Granted, I know that whichever service is best tends to vary from region to region. But, whenever I saw that my package was getting delivered via FedEx, I was generally glad to know it.
In my area, UPS is the shady shit-show that would totally pull some bullshit like this. UPS will open my mailbox and put packages in there (which is illegal in the USA). UPS will claim my package is delivered and then 3 days later, USPS delivers it. They have some kind of agreement with USPS to deliver the last mile, but UPS tracking literally shows the packages as delivered the moment they turn it over to the USPS. UPS will furiously beep the horn outside my bedroom window until I go to the front door to see what’s going on, and then have ME dig through their truck to find my own package. Anyway, I’m ranting now, as is the custom for men my age and in my condition.
USPS is just a whole other paradigm of unfathomably terrible shit show. Okay, I’ll stop. I have a problem.
Point is, FedEx used to be the best of shitty lot, so I wonder why they’ve suddenly and drastically gotten so bad as of late.
Well now one of the FedEx board members is now USPS PMG… Expect mail to get bad too.
Why make your product better if you can just eliminate the competition?