{"id":115,"date":"2006-11-01T10:19:29","date_gmt":"2006-11-01T16:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/01\/vexed-by-fedex\/"},"modified":"2006-11-01T10:19:29","modified_gmt":"2006-11-01T16:19:29","slug":"vexed-by-fedex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/01\/vexed-by-fedex","title":{"rendered":"Vexed by FedEx"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used to really like FedEx. They were fast, they were efficient, they had excellent customer support. It seems that they are no longer that way. For the second time in recent years they lost a package sent to me from California. There was nothing unusual about either of the packages; they were packed in FedEx’s own boxes and weighed only a pound or two. They both vanished somewhere within FedEx’s sorting facilities.\n<\/p>\n

I gleaned something somewhat interesting about FedEx’s operations while trying to locate the most recently lost package. Their tracking information, as presented on the web, is false. Here is the tracking information for my lost package, copied from their website:
\n\"fexex_lies.gif\"<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

There are a couple of things of interest. The first is that the delivery date conveniently vanished after it passed. It was supposed to be delivered on the 19th.\n<\/p>\n

The really interesting part is the top line that says “Oct 18, 2006 2:35 PM At dest sort facility DENVER, CO”. That statement, in short, is a lie. My package never got as far as Denver. When I spoke to a FedEx customer support agent on the phone, she told me that the last time the package was scanned was in the facility in Memphis, and that she had no information at all to indicate that it had left Memphis. When I asked about the tracking status that said it was in Denver, she mumbled something about “paperwork” and said something to the effect that that statement meant that the vehicle which was supposed to be carrying the package had arrived in Denver, nothing more.\n<\/p>\n

FedEx started tracing the package that day, but apparently never found it. Their follow-up communication has been poor. The package is gone and I’m out $80 for the value of that shipment for an indefinite period of time. FedEx reimburses the shipper, not the recipient, for lost packages, so I’m not gonna get my money back until PCBFabexpress gets their money and gets around to sending it to me. (I have no reason to think that this will be a problem, except that PCBFabexpress’s own customer-service communication is not exactly stellar.)\n<\/p>\n

Statistically speaking, it seems that FedEx has a much higher loss rate than the oft-maligned US Postal Service. I happen to have a somewhat statistically significant amount of information about the USPS’s service since I’ve been running Paper Jade<\/a> for two years now. Out of several thousand shipments over the last two years, the USPS has failed to deliver only two (not counting one that was sent to the wrong address because the recipient was confused about what city they live in). That’s a failure rate of under 0.1%.\n<\/p>\n

In contrast, FedEx has lost two packages sent to me in the last several years. I don’t know how many FedEx shipments I have received in that period of time, but I’m quite sure it’s fewer than 200. That means that the failure rate for FexEx I’ve observed is greater than 1%.\n<\/p>\n

So, in my experience, FedEx loses more than 10 times as many packages as the USPS. Now, statistical comparisons are tricky things and I fully realize that my stats are kind of sloppy, but the measurements themselves are inarguable. Draw your own conclusions.\n<\/p>\n

On top of all that, FedEx gives substantial amounts of money to the Republican Party, which is reason enough to avoid them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to really like FedEx. They were fast, they were efficient, they had excellent customer support. It seems that they are no longer that way. For the second time in recent years they lost a package sent to me from California. There was nothing unusual about either of the packages; they were packed in… Continue reading Vexed by FedEx<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionebula.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}