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Why FedEx is the Worst Delivery Service

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Spectere:
I have a package that's arriving to me via FedEx, and it's already turning into a frustrating experience, so I figured I'd vent a bit about why I feel that FedEx is the absolute worst delivery service that I've ever had the displeasure of using.

So, in this particular incident, I have a package coming to me from northern Wisconsin, roughly 10 hours away. Six parts, with an estimated delivery date of Saturday, June 20 for four parts and Sunday, June 21 for two. Kind of weird, but considering the total weight is 200 lbs (90 kg) I can understand. The package in question is a desk, so I explicitly set aside time this weekend to assemble it. Perfect, I'll be able to have it together in time to start work on Monday.

I wake up to an update this morning. The packages are now in Illinois, but the estimated delivery date for two of the parts due on Saturday have been pushed back to Monday, a day where my schedule is jam packed. All of the other parts remain unchanged, so it's only those two parts that got delayed. Okay, maybe it's a non-critical part and I can still assemble most of the desk. Let's just check the tracking information and check the weight of those two parts.

Oh, it's the two heaviest parts. In other words, the base and top. Fuck.

Edit: Just got an update. Now everything is supposed to get here on Monday. Here's an idea, FedEx: stop fucking lying to make yourselves look better and start giving proper estimates.

"Oh, but COVID-19! Oh, unexpected circumstances! Oh, but blah blah blah." No, fuck that. FedEx has a very long history of doing this kind of shit. I've gotten many, many packages delivered to me over the years (via USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, and Amazon), and it seems like every time I get something via FedEx they end up surprising me with just how awful they are. Let's get into a few examples.

First of all, they never estimate high and exceed expectations. They will "estimate" delivery dates that are beyond their abilities and then repeatedly push them back to keep them "accurate." There was one time that I ordered a package shipped via 2 day shipping and the delivery date was pushed back 5 times. The only time UPS has ever been late for a delivery was due to a goddamn winter storm.

Don't expect them to deliver early in the rare event that they do overestimate, though. It's really rare that they will. I ordered a package from an adjacent state (I think Indiana) that for some reason had an estimated 5 day delivery window. The package made it to Ohio within a day, and proceeded to sit in a warehouse, 45 minutes from my house, right up until the "estimated" delivery time. To add insult to injury, the package tracking said something like "package not due" as the current status.

At one point, they pulled the stereotypical cable guy ploy. When I ordered my Dell in 2016, somehow, despite three people being home at the time, we found that no delivery attempt was made. We checked our security camera and found that the delivery person simply walked up to the front door with a "while you were out" note, put it on the door, then left. Nice.

I've had a couple instances where two boxes that left from the same facility at the same time ended up two wildly different. The most notable one involved a package from Virginia, where one of them went straight from point A to point B while the other one ended up in Chicago (what?!) and ended up having an additional two days tacked onto its transit time.

My dad ordered something from California once via FedEx. A couple of days later, I ordered something from Pragua, Czechia via DHL. The international  package arrived in three days, including time spent in customs. The package from FedEx took eight business days. It's worth noting that USPS can get packages from California to Ohio in 3-4 days via ground, tops. I've had packages from Taiwan and China (which do tend to get held up in customs) arrive faster than that.

My company once relied on FedEx's same day delivery, to replace a failing server hard drive on our core file server. It took three days for the package to arrive.

The worst part is that I didn't have to rack my brain for any of this. I use FedEx as little as humanly possible yet I was able to come up with these off the top of my head. If you asked me what sort of negative experiences I had with other delivery services I'd have to actually sit down and think about it, but issues with FedEx just roll right off the tongue. Fucking terrible company, and I wish they weren't too big to fail.

Spectere:
Oh look, we can add another entry to the fucking list. So the aforementioned desk, surprisingly, arrived today (Saturday). Open up the box, and OH LOOK, THEY DESTROYED THE TOP OF THE DESK

Bobbias:
Jesus christ man, that's fucking awful. I don't blame you for being fucking pissed.

Spectere:
Yeah, it was worse considering it was a custom order and took around 3 weeks as-is. The company that sent it seems to be pretty swamped with WFH being a thing, so who knows when they'll even be able to handle this. I sent them an e-mail this weekend and they seem to be good about responding to service requests, so hopefully we'll be able to come up with something.

One thing we did notice when we looked over the box again is that there seemed to be a dark scuff on the box, which almost looked like it could have been a tire mark. The only theory we came up with is that the box was leaning against something and they straight up hit it with a cart or something. Doesn't matter how well they packaged it, there's nothing they could have done to protect it against that level of negligence.

Spectere:
Didn't think I'd get to add to this thread to quickly, but today a FedEx driver cut me off so badly that my car's collision mitigation system kicked in.

How the driver managed to completely miss a bright red car is beyond me.

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