According to their website and a delivery notification email, FedEx left a package on my porch today at 3:26pm. This package contained the old decommissioned Jetpants server that UPS botched the delivery of when I originally shipped it to the hosting facility two years ago. Amazingly, the package that FedEx delivered at 3:26pm didn’t actually appear until 3:43pm.
What magic is this? Has FedEx invented time-delayed invisible packaging? Have they discovered the secret of time travel? Sadly, no. They’re merely incompetent.
When the driver appeared with the package at 3:43, Felicity asked him why I had received a delivery notification email at 3:26. After joking that she should lie and tell me that she hadn’t seen the package at first because “someone had moved it”, he said that he had scanned it as soon as he was in the neighborhood to “get a jump on it”.
Tell me, FedEx: what good does it do me to be notified that my package has been delivered 17 minutes before it’s actually delivered? When I discover, during that 17 minutes, that I have no package, what do you think my first reaction will be?
Comments
They all are
I’ve had FedEx deliver to the wrong town/zip, and DHL deliver 4 hours before it arrived, prompting me to assume the same mistake as FedEx and drive around knocking on doors looking for my missing MacBook 8 hours before leaving the country.
UPS drivers are UPS employees, unlike FedEx and DHL.
Just to be clear
FedEx express employees are employed by FedEx. That courier was doing something that was wrong and a fire able offense. I was a driver for many years and know that doing what he did is not common practice. Trust me FedEx loves to fire employees for no good reason. So, a good reason like this one, they would jump all over.
Response to above comments
FedEx has different Operating Companies within the FedEx Corporation, so a delivery driver may actually be a contractor or a contractor’s employee, i.e. FedEx-Ground. FedEx-Express couriers are in fact employees.
Now for the comment titled “Just to be clear”, I would disagree with he comment about FedEx firing empolyees for no good reason. There are policies and procedures, like every other major corporation or small company that informs it’s employees what is acceptable and what is not. There is also a program with FedEx-Express called the Guaranteed Fair Treatment program that gives all employees the opportunity to present their case. There are also progressive levels that this can be taken to, to ensure fair treatment. I may be inclined to believe the former employee above may have been terminated for doing something unacceptable, and is bitter for it. She may not want to accept responsibility for what she did.
Transporting
It seems that simply transporting packages from Point A to Point B is something companies have big troubles with.
When I ordered my surround, the shop sent it through some delivery company. The deliverers never contacted me to schedule a delivery, and when I contacted them after two days, got all pissy and claimed it was I who should have initiated contact. Then it took a week of constant emails and phone calls for them to manage to actually put the package onto one of their trucks and get it out of their warehouses.
Just today, I woke up with a message on my phone, telling me that a package was ready for delivery. Only problem, it was in a completely different town, in the other end of the state. They’ve promised to get it right as soon as possible, but that probably won’t happen until after the weekend.