FedEx Problems

[Jenise]

A friend and I were expecting wine deliveries from different sources this week--mine on Tuesday from California, hers on Tuesday from Walla Walla. It was not only understandable but expected that the chaos from flooding would make the promised ETAs undoable. The problem is what FedEx did, or didn't do, about the changes.

We both got our ETAs moved to Wednesday, which didn't seem likely either so again no big deal when hers moved to Thursday, and mine oddly just changed to the word "DELAYED" where the ETA would normally be indicated but still showed "On truck out for delivery" as it had since Tuesday. I think we can presume the latter also means "on truck for delivery when we can get it out of the parking lot" and should not be taken literally. In our case, the station is in the next county, and there's a big landslide in the hilly pass between us and the rest of my county is Water World. Although we both have FedEx accounts, neither of us received emails about any changes in status.

On Thursday night my friend, who had been home all day, left her porch lights on until after 8:00. No delivery. On Friday, she checked the status online for an update and found "Delivery attempted 7:32 p.m" the night before. Well, NO WAY. They were home, and no door tag was left. Oddly, another attempt was not scheduled for Friday.

On Friday my status was unchanged, still "DELAYED". Then around 5 p.m. I received an email from FedEx notifying me of an attempted delivery around 3 p.m. Again, NO WAY. We were here, and no door tag.

So on the one hand, no problem with the delay. I'm not in a hurry for this wine and it honestly couldn't be better weather (33-40F) for sitting outside in a parking lot or riding around in a truck that can't get to me. I'm totally okay with all that. We're in a disaster zone; there are medicines and a host of other things I don't know about that should get priority handling in these circumstances. What I'm not okay with is the claims of attempted delivery that obviously didn't in fact happen and the inconsistent and inadequate communication from FedEx. It's all electronic, right? They know where the packages are, they know where the trucks are, weather's fine and we're being patient.

So why the fake delivery attempts? Does it satisfy contractual obligations with the shipper irrespective of local conditions? Does it tick some box for performance measurement by the Burlington station? There must be something. If any of you know anyone who works at FedEx, I'd love to know the reasoning behind this.

[David M. Bueker]

It’s been going on for years, even in good weather. A truck gets a big load, and the driver can’t get it finished, so they make fake deliveries. Only seems to happen with FedEx ground, which is virtually all contract drivers versus the FedEx employees for the faster stuff.

[Jenise]

It has happened to me before, and I've suspected as much. It pisses me off that there's no way to report this. I fought through the phone tree yesterday in order to find someone to complain to, and he insisted on delivering today to make up for the problem. He made an appointment at 11:45 with "the driver will call you 15 minutes before he arrives". It's after 3:00, no sign of them and I've never received Sunday deliveries later than 1:00 so most likely this is as bogus as Friday was. And the thing is, it's not without consequence. Those fake deliveries count against you as they countdown to the point where they just send the pkg back to the shipper.

FedEx Ground used to be Roadway Package System (RPS) before FedEx acquired them. It wouldn't surprise me if they still have a different corporate culture than the rest of FedEx--possibly including the fake delivery cheat.

The problem I've perpetually had with home wine delivery is that none of the major delivery services (UPS, FedEx, DHL) will commit to a time of day for their delivery. As I told FedEx, I have flex hours at work--if you can tell me within half an hour or an hour when the delivery will take place, I can be at home to sign for it. But I can't stay at home all day waiting for the delivery. The arrangement I eventually came to with FedEx is to have the winery ship to the local FedEx office, with instructions that the package be held there for pickup. That probably wouldn't help with your current situation, Jenise, because if FedEx can't send a delivery truck to you, you probably can't drive to their facility for pickup, either.

-Paul W.

[David M. Bueker]

Pre-pandemic (and still sometimes if I think I will be out) I had all my FedEx deliveries sent to a local Walgreens.

[Jenise]

I had one sent to a Walgreen's once--and was horrified to see the boxes randomly piled out in the open in the former photo department. Zero security. I'll bet a lot of those packages grew feet and left by the back door--never sent anything there again.

And no, no pickups allowed, Paul, even in good times.

[Jenise]

And the end of the story: I did finally reach a human at 1-800 FedEx who promised delivery at 11:45 yesterday morning. And the promise was important, as I told the agent when he suggested a Sunday delivery we had appts for Covid tests at 1 p.m. which would take us out of the house for about two hours so delivery on Monday (today) would make more sense. To that he said, "no problem on Sunday, we'll get it to you by 11:45." He took my phone # so the driver could call ahead with his ETA.

They got here about 3:30, and of course it was business as usual with no record of an 11:45 promise.

Par for the course with FedEx. Status updates, Customer Service promises--it's all meaningless. Package delivery is a duopoly, and the guy on the receiving end is the least important part of it.

And no, no pickups allowed, Paul, even in good times.

Must be a policy at that particular FedEx office. Or maybe it's only the larger facilities that allow shipments to be held for pick-up. My local FedEx place happens to be the air delivery hub for the whole state of New Hampshire.

The various big shippers (UPS, FedEx, DHL) have over the years had an on-again, off-again attitude towards shipping alcohol. I can appreciate the difficulties of dealing with 50 different sets of state regulations concerning shipment. You can't really blame a company that would rather just avoid the whole mess.

I used to get wine shipments via DHL because neither FedEx nor UPS would allow alcohol shipments to consumers. DHL used to allow my wine shipments to be held at their local office for pick-up. Then DHL decided they wouldn't ship alcohol anymore, but FedEx decided they would.

All very confusing.

-Paul W.