Reader Informs Us That FedEx Continues To Be A Bunch Of Jerks

What spontaneous wormholes open up beneath the packages at the FedEx head office, blinking them briefly out of existence only to regurgitate them again a month after they were due to deliver?

We may never really know. But it seems to happen an awful lot, and when that happens, FedEx is quick to issue phlegmy hems and wheezy haws, then point the finger soundly in the direction of some incompetence besides their own.

The delightfully alliterative Gaelen G. wrote us about a piece of jewelry that went missing from FedEx’s diligent care recently. FedEx made it about as difficult as possible for her to get resolution, until finally, random chance in a godless universe put her in contact with the one person at the FedEx office who actually wanted to help her, putting the rest of the organization’s unhelpfulness in sharp relief.

The email, after the jump.

I thought you might be interested in a recent FedEx experience I had.

I ordered a ring from a jewelery artist in Canada. I noticed it still hadn’t arrived, and checked the FedEx tracking website. It listed it as having gone out to the wrong address, come back, then again went “out for delivery” on June 6. It was June 22 when I checked.

I called to find out what was going on and was told they didn’t know where my package was. I verified the address and found that they had left my name off as addresse, so it was addressed only to the name of my office (which has over 100 people in it). The shipper had addressed it correctly, as this was reflected on the package tracking website. I tried to correct this mistake, but they insisted only the shipper could call and correct it. Didn’t matter much anyway, since the package had never been delivered. I alerted our mailroom.

So where was the package, after all? They couldn’t tell me and said they would call me back “within 48 hours.” They never called.

The shipper felt badly and sent out a replacement. In the meantime, more than a month after it was sent, the first package arrived. Then the replacement arrived.

I brought the replacement to the FedEx office downstairs, unopened, and explained the situation, and told them I just wanted it returned to sender. The clerk was extremely rude and kept insisting that I had to either pay for the return trip or give them the shipper’s billing number (“I don’t have that.” “Well then you just have to call them.”).

I asked to talk to the manager, for which I got a lot of attitude. Then, a miracle:

I repeated the whole story to the manager. I explained again that I just wanted to turn the duplicate shipment around back to the sender. Her response? “Sure.” And she took it out of my hands.

Whether it actually arrives back at the shipper — I’ll have to wait and see….

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