The workers at the FedEx Kinkos in Astor Place didn’t know how to react when reader Eric asked to overnight a letter. They were apparently trained to handle only the Kinkos side of the store, and weren’t sure how to ship Eric’s parcel—a school board election ballot—to Hackensack, New Jersey. Their solution was both innovative and idiotic: they told Eric to write his credit card info on a slip of paper, and promised to take care of everything the next morning.
Eric writes:
When you walk into a store that says FEDEX on it, one would think that the employees there would know how to ship things via FedEx. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case on Sunday night at the FedEx Kinko’s on Astor Place in Manhattan.My town is having a school board election on Tuesday. I’m in college now, so I requested an absentee ballot. The county clerk’s office mistyped my address, so I only ended up getting the ballot on Sunday. I brought it to Kinko’s to make sure it arrived back at the clerk’s office in time.
Unfortunately, when I got there, no one at the store knew how to handle FedEx because their “shipping station was closed”. Of course, the hours listed on their website don’t say anything about separate hours. The employee’s solution was to fill out an order form and then call the store back tomorrow to get the tracking information. Because of the time-sensitivity of it, though, I needed to know if I could sent it ground or if it had to be sent overnight. No one could give me an answer, other than that I should call 800-go-fedex. I asked 3 people in the store (Malik, Stephanie, and the manager Carlo or Carlos) if they had some kind of internal number they could call for me, but they claimed they didn’t. So, while standing in a FedEx store, I called FedEx. The guy on the other end didn’t seem to understand the concept of days (First he said ground would take one day and arrive on Wednesday, which doesn’t make sense. Then he said that it would arrive on Tuesday but it could arrive on Wednesday). Eventually it was all sorted out and I decided to send it ground.
Then came the next issue. Since they couldn’t tell me how much the cost would be, I had to write my credit card number on the order form, which presumably gets attached to the package and sent all over the place. Seems like a really good opportunity for identity thieves. And because I was just handing it to a person who wasn’t actually entering it into the system, I couldn’t get a receipt and there was no tracking number. The only thing I could get confirming that I had given them the package was one of the carbon-copies of the order form, which anyone could just pick up and create. When one of the nice things about FedEx is being able to track the package at every step, this didn’t fill me with a lot of confidence.
This morning, I called the store to get the tracking information. I was on the phone for 22 minutes, constantly being put on hold and then being asked who I was holding for. I was worrying the whole time that they lost my package. This kept going until someone took pity on me and said she would call me back. When she did, as luck would have it, there was a tracking number and the price appears correct. Hopefully FedEx is able to deliver it better than they were able to receive it!
I called the district manager last night to complain; I left a voicemail but he hasn’t called back.
We want to commend Eric for his civic awareness and commitment to local democracy. School board elections are dominated by seniors, angry parents, and property owners, so it’s all the more impressive that he was willing to get involved while in college.
That said, have some faith in the government! Hackensack is 20 miles from New York. The post office would’ve been up to the challenge.
(Photo: Maulleigh)
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i avoid new york like the plague honestly. AND ALL YOU BASTARDS STILL COME HERE!!! kidding. new york’s an anamoly as far as what can be done there. basically any advice given on where to find services there doesn’t apply to most of the rest of the country. except between 3:45 and 4am when the city inexplicably empties and you can lie down in the street.
bleh, my skin feels dirty just thinking about being in new york. grime :p
First off the Elitist attitude’s of most of you on here saying that Kinko’s Employee’s are stupid is insulting, just because people work in Retail doesn’t make them stupid, Most of my coworkers are college bound and or finishing graduate school. Not everybody has the benefit of finding the most exciting career path of working in a mundane office.
Secondly why the hell would this person leave their credit card number with anybody? There are 3 different forms to fill out for FedEx Express, Express International, and Ground. If they came after their Pick up time (Which is posted not only on the website but also on every front door of every Kinko’s) they would be SOL on that package going out that night anyway so if they didn’t feel comfortable leaving it then they could have came back the next day.
As far as there not being numbers, there’s Customer Service Numbers everywhere in the damn store, we get about a million people bitching about stupid shit all the time. 1-800-2-kinkos or 1-800-go-fedex
Problem is, and yes there are employee’s that are stupid too (hell we have a few in my store and we are currently in the process of firing them), most customers are stupid too. If I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me if they could “MAIL” something or drop off UPS or DHL at my store alone I’d be rich. Hell I get packages that are UPS and DHL that people just leave at our counter and run out of the store like their dropping off a bomb.
Is Kinko’s perfect, Hell no. Are customers stupid? A lot of the time. Are Kinko’s employee’s stupid? Some of them (maybe more). But most of you don’t even know the BS Kinko’s employee’s have to go through every single day.
Now as far as those people at this store? They sound lazy and stupid and I would fire them if I worked there as their boss, but I don’t. I would also tell this customer that their stupid for leaving their credit card number with strangers.
BTW who ever said Teamsters Union is an idiot, there’s no Union with Kinko’s or FedEx so I don’t know where you got that one.
honestly, if you’re going to attempt to defend intelligence in a really long rant, run it through spellcheck. random capitalization, random punctuation, constant misuse of apostrophe and mistaking “there,” “they’re” and “their” really punch holes in your defense.
that was just to be a bitch.
Someone went to a Fedex Kinko’s and expected the employees to help him with a shipping product that makes up part of their name? OMG LOL HAO STOOPID AMIRITE.
I lived in the UES for a summer and had to send some packages home using a FedEx/Kinkos. The first time I was completely polite to the woman working and received only attitude and the feeling that I was inconveniencing her.
The next couple times, I realized that I got better and quicker service the ruder I was to her. I’m not joking, I felt like I was vying for dominance. I would basically throw the package on the counter, not say one word, and throw her the stink eye. Only then did she hustle and do her job in a timely manner.
Manhattan is an odd beast….
Surely the Astor Place FedEx Kinkos is not the only place in the Borough of Manhattan where one can overnight a package. Why didn’t this chucklehead just go elsewhere when he realized the employees were clueless?
This kind of shiz does not go down at UPS Stores. At least not the one I worked at. We were all super trained and could ship through multiple carriers.
Dear OP,
For future reference, you can just use take your absentee ballot to the Post Office and have them postmark it. The ballot must merely be postmarked by the day before the election in order to be counted. No need for expensive overnight shipping!
Source: [longisland.about.com]
Return your Absentee Ballot to your county Board of Elections. If delivered in person, they must receive it before the polls close on the day of election. If you are mailing it, it must be postmarked no later than the day before election, and received no later than the seventh day after election.
@katylostherart: not really since it did go through spell check and i suffer from Dyslexia but hey thanks for being a dick.
Spelling has never = intelligence.
I’ve had good luck at the Fedex Kinko’s near me, but I also don’t go there all that often. I will say that A) I once had to overnight my grad school applications and the USPS got all 6 of them there on time and B) My mom once had a Fedex employee tell her she could mail something to a Fedex Kinkos location and they would hold it for me, since it was a large box that I didn’t want sitting outside my door. When I went to pick it up, the Fedex Kinkos employees berated me (the person who picked it up) even though it was a Fedex employee who said it was ok AND I had no knowledge of this plan until it was already shipped. I haven’t been back to that location since, and I have no plans to.
The county clerk’s office mistyped my address, so I only ended up getting the ballot on Sunday. I brought it to Kinko’s to make sure it arrived back at the clerk’s office in time.
So you ONLY got it on Sunday and wanted to ship it back on Sunday???
Wow, what a place you live that you have mail delivered on Sundays…
But if you were next daying it, you could have shipped it on Monday and it would have arrived as well.
98% tile isn’t much to brag about unless it is around other geeks. Your percentage in Common sense is what mattered here. Less than 50% is what I am putting you down for…
So overall, you are in the ~74% range. Happy?
@Skankingmike: basic understanding of language is actually a prime indicator of intelligence. language is an abstract concept meant to help us understand and explain the world around us. the words represent objects, actions and concepts that are still there whether or not they are labeled and described with words. the ability of a brain to wrap around abstractions such as language, the passing of time and the quantity zero (math being another language) does actually matter when it comes to being able to work out more difficult ideas. the human brain picks up most of its sounds by listening to others, mostly before the age of about 5. you pick up most of your spelling habits and understanding of grammar from reading. so most people that cannot use punctuation correctly and don’t understand homonyms just don’t read.
you turned out to be dyslexic. you are also a dick though because you called someone else an idiot first so i just think being snarky is called for.
you also came to the defense of someone not knowing how to do their job which, unless they’re in training, there is no excuse for. bad management or not, it doesn’t take much to learn on your own what you’re supposed to do if you have even the basic intent of doing what you’re getting paid for. sadly, most people don’t care. being careless doesn’t deserve being excused.
Kinko’s was a nice operation before FedEx bought them
@matto: I finally had to join. This is crazy why pick on this guy? Its a fedex store they should know how to help him. Why must people always pick on the consumer. granted some deserve it but not this guy
I worked at Kinko’s during the transition to FedEx Kinko’s, and I can confirm that the training and organization between the two halves of the operation (copy vs. ship) is rather lacking. Very few employees are able to master the entire scope of the new operation (copying, binding, printing, machine maintenence, customer service, sign making, software, the minutia of FedEx shipping, packaging, etc, etc), so the staff, pulled in too many directions as to job description, naturally fragmented into specialist positions. So if you needed to ship something when the shipping specialist was not on shift, you were out of luck, and the company didn’t want to pay to put another employee through their woefully inadequate web-based training seminar – or, god forbid, have to hire someone new. One of the main reasons I left (other than the fact I graduated college and was ready to hightail it out of retail forever) was that, whenever real and tangible problems with the business model arise, FedEx Kinko’s is quick to issue new uniform components or lower color copy costs by 10 cents, or introduce strained new ‘consultative selling’ scripts for employees to recite – but they are slow to examine the root causes of problems in their business and deployment strategies.
As to the original post: I think the submitter was just on the unfortunate receiving end of this internal disorganization.
Yes, the post office would have been up for the challenge but, depending on the time of day, it may not have been possible to guarantee next day service. Even postal delivery confirmation (‘tracking’) only indicates that it was delivered, but not necessarily to the proper address. The logical solution, at least for future service, would be to ship items via a convenient The UPS Store. Those locations offer the office services that Kinkos does, as well as specialize in ALL shipping aspects. These locations also have very late evening pickup times to get those important air shipments there the next day. Not only is the service excellent at The UPS Stores, but they offer the SAME low shipping rates as the major hub locations. Many people don’t realize that ‘alternative’ shipping locations have markups. I may sound like a commercial, but I too had to learn the hard way and can count on UPS. Tom K.
@ceejeemcbeegee: You would think that comment would have ended this whole “thing”, but no… Thanks for the clarification though.
@ceejeemcbeegee: That’s only true for certain cities and/or elections. I know that my last absentee ballot had to be delivered to the city by election day.
And the guy sent his ballot to Hackensack NJ so I don’t know why you used NY information.
The stores are not open late at night for the shipping business. They are open to finish copy orders. The employees working that shift don’t know a whole lot more than normal people do about shipping. To them that whole area is self service once the shipping coordinators leave for the day. (after the pickups)