Clayton was waiting at home for a very important package to arrive — his passport via a travel visa service — for which he had paid FedEx for overnight delivery. So when he his package was instead dropped off at a front door nearby, and not his own, he was a bit unnerved.

He says he heard a knock at the door, but by the time he got there, he saw someone who may have been a FedEx delivery driver walking away. According to Clayton she turned and saw him, but kept walking. Okay, he figured, that must have been for someone else in the building since there were no packages at the door. So where was his passport?

I checked online a few times in the next hour and noticed that my package had been marked as delivered and “Left at Front Door.” After walking around a bit I finally found my package delivered next door in a mailbox clearly marked with the wrong address with a list of names of the residents (none of which was mine).

I called FedEx to let them know what had happened, and mostly to politely ask whether there was anything that we could do to prevent future misdelivery, since being worried about a lost passport two weeks before travelling wasn’t a feeling I’m eager to repeat. The FedEx customer service agent dutifully informed me that leaving the doorway of the correct house (with a name labeled mailbox) to walk over and deliver to the house next door instead was “within the terms of the service I had paid for,” and let me know that in the future if I wanted things delivered to the right address, I should pay for signature receipt service.

When I expressed that in the future I wouldn’t be comfortable shipping with FedEx if this was the extent of the effort they make on expensive deliveries, he continued to remind me that I could pay more to have FedEx do their job correctly.

Clayton adds that it’s pretty impressive of FedEx to turn a call from a non-upset person into one that results in customer anger and frustration.

“Next time you’ve got an option with who delivers your packages, keep in mind that as far as FedEx is concerned ‘Left at front door’ means “Could see your house from where the package was delivered.’ “

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