I cannot impress upon you all how much I loathe FedEx. I feel like they go out of their way to mess things up.
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.
Uni Uni likes to use “act of God” as the reason for failed delivery LOL
That explains a lot actually.
USPS does that shit here, too. They mark stuff "Delivered"and only bring it 2-3 days later. Cooking the metrics, I assume.
That’s really unusual for USPS. You didn’t mean UPS?
Nope. All the downvotes wont make my mail carrier suck any less. USPS around here is terrible for packages. Mailbox stuff is fine.
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.
UPS - Union, drivers are the MOST senior positions and get about $150k a year (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.
How are they salary and hourly at the same time? Those are opposites.
I see you’ve never heard of salaried non-exempt.
Which is, grosely oversimplified, a guaranteed 40 hours of pay with an hourly rate attached for overtime pay.
Fixed it
There was a woman in her late 30s in one of my college classes back in 1999. She was a driver for UPS, and had nearly 20 years worth stock options. UPS went public that year, and her stock options were converted to Class A common stock. She decided to hang onto her shares. I found out a couple of years ago that she signed up for a DRIP (Dividend Reinvestment Plan), and will retire a millionaire.
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.
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
Not USPS in my experience.
Ditto, only seen it with fedex
Motherfucker literally snuck up my stairs to put that on my apartment door when I was inside waiting for hours.
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.
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.
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.
Think how much it sucks for the guy who planned his whole weekend around that package of bull semen that never arrived.
“Should’ve known it was too good to be true…”
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.
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.Shouldn’t it have been shipped in a crate with tilt indicators if it is truly fragile? You should blame your supplier.
Narrator: they did not 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.
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.
You’re right but I’d like to add that UPS warehouse workers get fucked so bad. So they fuck up packages to go faster. My boy worked in one. You have to work in the warehouse to make it to driver unless you know somebody.
USPS, on the other hand, is totally fantastic. That’s why it’s constantly under attack from conservatives who think a government service needs to turn a profit.
Guess that’s the difference between union and non-union employees.
It is absolutely not, but yeah being in a union could entice you to do better work. I wish I was.
Reasons why companies with union jobs might provide better services due to employees being more personable and reliable:
- Higher wages and better benefits attract people more serious about their work
- Higher wages and better benefits reduce stress in the life of employees, making them more personable on the job
- Unions negotiate employee contracts to limit things like quotas, resulting in lower stress, happier employees
There are probably other reasons too, since I’m just going off the cuff here, but it absolutely makes sense to me that the company with non-union jobs in this industry provides the worst service.
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.
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.
FedEx is the worst of all. USPS is the best. At least where I’ve lived.
I was in an sketchy apartment years ago waiting for hours for a FedEx package that needed signed. I waited the whole time in the living room by the front door. Eventually I got frustrated and walked outside. The FedEx person had snuck up my creaky stairs and put that fucking sticker on my door instead of even bothering to bring up the package and knock.
USPS has always been great with two exceptions. They once broke a jar of apple butter and once lost a thing of cookies I shipped overnight for a month and they came back to me. They were scary.
That’s out of hundreds of packages, so I love USPS.
It’s not even that. It happens before it’s even at the last warehouse. I know to disregard it but at the same time, if I have a phone coming from Google that I requested signature for delivery, I can’t roll the dice. I’ll move work from home days just to be annoyed again.
I’ve had recent problems with FedEx like this as well. Like 3 of the past 4 deliveries it says it’s going to deliver maybe a day early, then just fucking sits in the depo in the city ALL DAY while still saying it’s going to be delivered today, until it’s the end of the day and it switches to tomorrow.
My favorite is when it actually says “out for delivery” on the day it’s supposed to arrive, never shows up, then changes to “could not be delivered” after not showing up.
I called FedEx last time this happened because the delivery was a firearm, and I needed to know what’s happened. The person said it was loaded on a truck that morning, which triggered the status change to “out for delivery”, but they didn’t actually have anyone scheduled to drive the truck that day so it never even left the lot. It did arrive the next day, but I learned to not even trust “out for delivery” from them.
Awesome system, guys.
I actually ordered an adjustable/standing desk. They shipped via FedEx on the 21st and FedEx emailed me saying it was coming today. Did it show up? Nope. Never even moved from the initial location. Now they emailed me that it’s coming tomorrow. It might, but I’m not getting my hopes up. Honestly I hope it doesn’t come because it’s only the top of the desk and not the adjustable base so I’m going to have a 48" x 24" table top just sitting around without the base.
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 but anyone under 30 doesn’t know # as pound, it’s hashtag.
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…
Conservatives are trying to destroy USPS because they want everything as shitty and privatized as possible. They want to run a government service as a business after kneecapping them by making them fund 30 years of pensions in advance. They bitch about a government service not turning enough profit. They’re sick with greed.
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.
You didn’t do the needful. It’s a really important part of the process.
Sorry, I’m not racist against Indians (in fact my partner on that job is Indian and I like him) but I got micromanaged in my last freelance job by Asheesh from AT&T and I hate that fucking guy. Sitting on his ass in Mumbai telling us to work faster on a 13 hour shift.
I mean, the people they hired are probably jackasses, but not all of them. And it’s really the management that’s the issue.
These drivers are treated like shit. There is a reason why things are the way they are. I didn’t get my package right away, but it’s okay, because eventually I did and they just left it. They’re asked to do much for way too little. Remember, it’s the fuckers at the top that cause all of our problems. Don’t blame the help.
I mean thats cool and all but somebody has to deliver the packages. It’s not the recipient’s fault the job sucks, the recipient paid for delivery with an expected time of reciept. Entering gate codes is part of the job, ringing doorbells and actually waiting for someone to answer is part of the job, actually stopping at the goddamn address and getting the package out of the truck and going up to the door with it is part of the job. If they have unreasonable expectations placed on them, that’s between them and their manager. I fail to see what it has to do with me or my package. I had FedEx leave notes on my door THREE consecutive times saying “we could not deliver your package because ‘the business is closed.’” It was a residential address, and the package contained critical medical equipment. Mofo had those slips ready so he could cut and run without looking for the package.
Yes, yes, it’s the wage slave workers who have unreasonable expectations placed on them in order to feed themselves and their families that are at fault in the our capitalist system. I see that now.
If they would like to respond to the pressures of unfair quotas by not doing their job then they should do it proper and go on strike or quit and force change through high turnover, not screw over the customer. I work a bullshit underpaid job too, but I don’t neglect my responsibilities and give my clientele the short end of the stick.
I mean, I agree. But also is it not just more work for them to bring the package back to the facility? If they would just leave the damn package they could save us both from more work!
I don’t think it’d be more work for them, since they presumably have to go back to the facility anyway.
Sometimes they’ll leave it at a secondary pickup location, so it’s at least an additional stop for them then.
They won’t deliver FedEx Ground packages to my workplace because it takes too long. Only next day or other priority levels are delivered.
I’ve never heard pen scratches in a photo so loud
So you’re telling me the company that doesn’t have unions fails to deliver?
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
Yeah my boy worked for UPS and said he saw dudes bounce pass TVs in the warehouse.
I used to work at a factory that made exercise equipment and the rule was once it’s out the door it’s not our problem so we’re like drop kicking packages into the truck and just cramming in as much as we can. That’s just the culture in some workplaces and a lot of these companies are really just cutting corners everywhere and the morale is low. The factory was built in the middle of the city, but the area surrounding it was a historic neighborhood, and it was kind of low income. And they would just run trucks through that area that were overloaded by a lot, and no one cared. I’m not talking about boxes of Amazon goods. I’m talking about solid-ass steel. This destroyed the streets. I mean, if they’re hiring people and firing people, you know, who’s going to take the job seriously? It Is an absolute fucking shit show out there. It was a very unsafe workplace and you know, I like tried to organize some workers and they retaliated, the people at the top that is, by messing around with my forklift. I almost crashed into racking and the metal, because it was metal above. Plates of metal could have came through my cage and killed me. We’ve gone back in time. I mean, we have got such a toxic culture for example at some of these amazon warehouses, where you’ve got people coming in with guns killing each other. But then if you’re a hard worker, you still get treated like shit, and you gotta go through turnstiles like your a fucking criminal. The workplace is incredibly unsafe and there are things that most people who work a desk job don’t understand. I always punch upwards.
I just worked a freelance job where we had six guys up on lifts 30 to 50 feet up in unsafe wind conditions with no safety gear beyond hi vis vest. I hear you.
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?
I want to know more about the monkey test
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.
