FedEx and the Promise of Delivery

[Obsessed]

During the winter snow storm on Friday, the lady in the FedEx Chevy van came all the way up here, but our UPS guy with a Sweet F-250 4WD wrapped a package and left it at the mailbox 1/2 mile down the road.

Of course, the UPS guy knows our road and the FedEx lady just learned.

It is officially shipping follies season.

 

[Nogoodnamesleft]

I had a thread recently about my experiences with FedEx. I never did get my parcel.

Thank goodness they don't deliver pizza. If received at all it would be three days late.

 

[schmee]

I used to love Fedex, have a wholesale account still. But they are a business that has failed completely now. I can't imagine a way to be worse then they are. And it's obvious they are costing themselves a ton of money in the process. A couple years ago they drove in my driveway 3 times in 1.5 weeks to deliver a guitar and didnt have it on the truck. They lost it. But found it after 2 weeks.
Here's one little thing I bought from Sweetwater recently that took 18 days. As you can see these notices are all for the same item, and this is probably half of the updates I got. I got a continual stream of notices like this daily:

 

[teletail]

Someone gets 50 packages in a row with no problem - crickets. One package is late and all of a sudden the whole system is in apocalyptic decay.

 

[gusfinley]

I have a FedEx distribution center (don't know what it is really called ) almost literally down the street. Often I will see that something arrives there and I get excited about receiving it soon.

Somehow inside that center the space-time continuum is disrupted and things seem to get lost there for days (the record so far is Five!). I once thought maybe I would try to go pick my item up only to be greeted by a see of trucks and realizing that they probably would have no idea where it was.

If I get a choice, I choose UPS to avoid that FEDEx hole down the street.

 

[swervinbob]

I finally got to where I get mine held at the main sorting facility in Beaumont, Texas. I can’t do any thing about how long it takes to get there, but at least that stops it from being on the truck for delivery for two or three days.

 

[Sax-son]

I live in a very rural area and those shipping companies are our lifeline for a lot of things we need. If I can get something from one part of the country to my home in 10 working days or less, I can live with that.

 

[Yesyoudidyouare]

Well, Stew Mac is in Ohio

Whaaat!!!! That’s right!!!!!

 

[Scooter91]

Waiting for a Bosch Freak at the moment. FedEx first said Monday, then Tuesday, then I got a notification at 0200 that my delivery date has changed to Monday again. I guess it will get here when it gets here...

 

[Timbresmith1]

I assume you saw the news report of the fedex driver who was dumping packages in the woods, by truckload, for weeks?

Or the house with thousands of amazon packages in its front yard?

fun times.

I have some space in my yard for such dumping. I guarantee they won’t sit outside for longer than 45 minutes.

 

[1293]

My dogs love the FedEx guy. He gives them biscuits.

 

[imwjl]

FedEx is really hit and miss because of their distribution model. Multiple networks, so you can actually get two deliveries in a single day on different trucks. But it’s really bad if you get some wacko regional dispatchers. Or really good.
UPS is much more predictable. Single network. Unionized employees. No independent contractors, etc. Lots more efficiencies. In my particular neck of the woods, give me UPS every time.
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Yes, FedEx has more SCSC codes, but UPS also hands last mile to USPS for some shippers.

The overarching problem is a you get what you pay for. Many do not realize even a 2 day delivery they get is a shipper with a pre-negotiated or discount rate.

The other matter many don't realize is most of us have been buying a lot more stuff for a while and we have record low unemployment. Things are stretched thin all over. From the stand point of working where we do a lot of receiving and shipping with lots of carriers, things are not quite as bad as some individuals make them out to be.

Just my department receives a lot of packages. If I go with the pre-negotiated 2 day I can see more hiccups. If I make that explicit choice outside that and pay for priority it mostly works as it is supposed to. We even have drivers who have more of our stuff on the vehicles but they take care of priority first.

 

[Daddydex]

I have even worse luck with USPS.

Dan

 

[Rick Schmidlin]

Welcome to Christmas Shipping

 

[Flat6Driver]

 

[rz350]

I bought a 1964 Hammarlund HQ-180 on ebay, it shipped December 2nd, it's now been sitting in I assume a trailer at a distribution center 21 miles from me for 5 days, they just keep rescanning and saying "in transit", supposed to arrive on the 8th....

I've called them 4 times, they said they put a tracking trace on it and will know more tomorrow, I'm retired so I'm tempted to go down there and refuse to leave until they give me my radio, or until the police show up and drag me out in front of news crews....

I hate this crap....