Please don't use FedEx shipping for orders in South-East Michigan

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I just wanted to vent my frustration and get some information out there to hopefully get the word out about how horrid FedEx shipping is in my area.

I received the notification that my order was shipped on Monday Aug 30th with an estimated delivery date of Wednesday Sept 1st. Wednesday morning at 11:30am I got a notification on the tracking number saying the package was out for delivery even though it hadn’t left the FedEx facility in Pennsylvania. The delivery details went from estimated Wednesday to “Wed Sept 1st by 8:00pm”. The PA FedEx facility is 9 1/2 hours from my house so literally impossible to get to me by that time anyways. 8pm came and went and the delivery details went from “Wed Sept 1st by 8:00pm” to “Pending”. That evening around 2am I received another out for delivery notification with the same “guarantee” of by 8pm that day. 8pm Thursday passes and the status went back to pending. Rinse and repeat Friday.

Friday morning I was rather peeved and worried so I called the support line. After waiting for an hour on hold I was told that the shipment will be delivered by 8pm Friday and I quote “Guaranteed”. It wasn’t delivered Friday…

I called support again yesterday (Saturday) and was told they weren’t doing daily deliveries to my area. The agent told me to drive to the distribution hub and pick up my package in-person if I wanted it before next week sometime. So I drove the 30min to the facility only to be turned away by security because it was “After Pick-up Hours” at 2pm…

The security guard told me to come back today before 10am to pick up my package. So this morning I went up there to try again. Completely different story today. There was a different guard working there and he filled me in with what was actually happening. My package was locked in a trailer in the shipping hub behind 3 other trailers with no way to get to any of them for “at least another few days”. He told me that if a trailer comes in and the loading dock is busy it gets put in the staging area and left for an unknown amount of time. This has been going on for years the guard said not just a covid thing.

There was also a few mix ups in PA. First, FedEx express shipments are not supposed to go to the facility I was currently at. They are supposed to go to a more local hub directly from the origin hub. So screw up in PA lead to it sitting in a locked trailer until at least Thursday at the earliest. Second, the trailer was flagged incorrectly in there system as “Out for delivery” instead of “On way to distribution hub” with no way of fixing it apparently…

One more thing I want to add: The “In-person Pick up” does not close randomly in the middle of the day… the other guard just didn’t want to print the form I had to fill-out. He is “notoriously lazy” the guard said. Pick up at most hubs is 8am-6pm Mon-Sat and 8-12pm Sun FYI.

The security guard did put a flag on my order for “advanced information” so I will be getting more detailed info on it when updates come in the future. So A+ dude, he was much more helpful than the phone agents and previous security guard.

I have seen some comments saying “just be patient” but this is a bit beyond me being restless to get something. I am not spoiled to think that 1-2 day shipping should take roughly 1-2 days. Takes 3-4 days? Fine, still better than “Pending” with a delivery estimate of 2 WEEKS after initial date. If it is known that your supply chain is currently swamped and 2 days is not probable then you should not be offering it as a shipping option period. I am a SW developer. If I told my customer something will take 2 days to do and I blow past that deadline telling them every day “Yeah you’ll get it by COB today!” I would loose my job. Covid or not, this should be seen as unacceptable. At the very least be honest and say what is really happening like what the security guard did for me today.

TL;DR: FedEx logistics have been messed up for a long time and covid has not helped at all. The facility near me is so overwhelmed they can’t even keep up. Don’t ship FedEx. They offer services that they have no way of supporting.

All of that being said, anger aside, I want to have a discussion on possible shipping solutions for your area. If this is doable, maybe the Framework shipping team can use other means depending on the destination area? I know that seems like a logistical nightmare for them but it will definitely help prevent major frustrations like I am experiencing.

I saw a post from @nrp in the Batch 2 thread mentioning the difference in service quality depending on the carrier and location (Thread post here: August/Batch2 Delivery thread - #341 by nrp). In my area FedEx is the worst, USPS is just slow but gets things places, and UPS is rather great. If there is any way to alter the shipper for future orders please refrain from using FedEx in SE Michigan.

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Sorry to hear about your experience, but the big problem is that all of the major carriers in the US have times when their service is… less than optimal:
Examples:

  1. I used to live in rural Pennsylvania during the first year of college, and I scraped together every last penny to buy a used Macbook 540c (ooh Color!) when that was already an out of date model. (Apple was on to powerPC by then). I requested that signature be required just to make sure no shenanigans. UPS was the shipper, and I told my grandmother to make sure she was home and listening for the doorbell on the day the thing was supposed to arrive. She probably called me every 10 minutes to say “no, not yet” while I was at my part time job. Eventually I checked on the web site, and it said “delivered”, but she still hadn’t heard or seen anything. It turns out that they “delivered” it to a puddle in the small alleyway between my house and the next. Despite the box being sopping wet, at least nobody stole it, and it actually worked. So much for the signature.
  2. I lived in Philadelphia for my second year and got a PO Box since I had to change addresses every 3 or 6 months due to the dorm lottery system at Drexel. Sometimes people sent me stuff from back “home” (Japan). One day I found a ripped paper bag with nothing in it inside my PO Box. “Oops”, they told me, “whatever it was must have fallen out.” That was USPS.
    I am sure DHL and the others must have the same issues.
    I have never had similar issues in Japan, but in the US… buyer beware. I would just get tracking and insurance on everything every time. If you insure it for a bit more than it’s worth, maybe you can at least be compensated for your time. Nothing to do about slowness, though.
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Update: The package is now lost…

Following the submitting of the original post, I created an “Investigation” on the FedEx website. Being that it was a holiday weekend I didn’t think anything would happen until at least today.

Randomly this afternoon I received a text saying that my package was delivered. It wasn’t at my door or garage or mailbox. I checked all of the my neighbors and rental office as well. The package was no where to be seen.

So I thought that maybe it was at the shipping facility and being marked as delivered because I had tried to put a hold on the package before. I drove to the facility and spoke with the security team at the front desk. They told me that it was put on a truck this morning and delivered to my house at the time I got the text…

So I called the support line trying to get some more information. My investigation was automatically closed and I have no way of opening another one now that the package was marked delivered. Support only offered to get in touch with the driver to see where he dropped off the package.

That’s it.

So I am waiting to hear from the driver. They are supposed to call me in the next 1-3 hours to give me information on where it was dropped off.

I tried to file a lost package claim but since it was signed for the website is not letting me attempt. So screw me I guess.

I am going to wait to hear from the driver before getting in contact with Framework support.

Don’t ship FedEx.

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Hi Thomas, sorry to hear that. Definitely let us know what the result is with FedEx.

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Update 2: Package was delivered to the wrong address entirely.

The driver never ended up calling me in the time window support gave me so I called back and pressed to be transferred to the Customer Advocate Team instead of general support.

It took some “convincing” but I was eventually able to speak with them. The advocate team is way better and easier to work with than the normal “support”. They were able to re-open the investigation and got a hold of the driver directly. The driver was never even in my area. He did a few business drop offs and that was it.

So now a “Trace Agent” is taking over the case in the morning. It looks like the package was included in a mass drop off for one of the factories north of me. The new “Agent” will get in contact with me in the morning (9/8 AM) on how they plan on resolving this “issue”.

FedEx normal support is terrible. I was given different information every single time I called. Finally talking with people who care was a game changer. I know the general area the package was taken to and why it isn’t in my hands instead of just being accused of misplacing it.

@nrp Thank you for the reply. I will update this thread tomorrow when I hear from this new person.

Seriously though. Don’t Ship FedEx

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I can’t say I’ve had a good experience with FedEx in at least two years with one exception: Overnight by 10 AM for a few things for work. Any other shipping service ends up in limbo for at least a few days.

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Update 3+4: Package was finally delivered.

The outside box was roughed up a bit and the bubble pockets inside were mostly popped. Nothing was damaged and the laptop boots up just fine!

So the rest of the story: The new person never reached out to me today. I had a rather busy day at work so I couldn’t spend the same amount of time trying to figure this situation out. I called support around noon and got rooted through the customer advocate team after another round of convincing the initial agent… (Side note, if someone has a case number that is currently assigned to a support agent WHY CAN’T YOU JUST TRANSFER THEM???).

The Customer Advocate team member told me that this “trace agent” was never assigned to the issue. So they requested again for one to be assigned and I had to get back to work.

A few hours later a friend of mine @'d me on Twitter to a thread of someone complaining about how bad FedEx shipping was in Michigan right now. I commented a piece of my story and some condolences to the thread writer. 20 min later I got a DM from FedEx Help Twitter asking me if they could help resolve this issue. I gave them the info and a trace agent called me not 10 minutes later. The agent said they were sending someone to get the package from the business it was wrongly dropped off at right as we spoke.

The package was finally delivered by hand from some FedEx employee at 5pm this evening.

Not once during this entire experience was I given full information on what was going on. Each time someone promised me something would happen nothing did. It took the PR department on Twitter to get involved for anything to really happen. I am glad this is all over and I can finally use the product I bought. I don’t mind waiting, I just hate being lied to and screwed over for what seemed like no reason.

Don’t ship FedEx

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Sorry about your experience. I’ve had many bouts of anger with FedEx over the years, both work and personal related. I cringe when I see a company has used them. But likely varies by region. Maybe around here FedEx is terrible and UPS is great, but opposite in other cities.
However I must say FedEx came through with my Framework on second business day - small miracles do happen lol

Edit: I just realized how old this thread is, oops