This story may seem petty and trivial, but in a time where so called identity theft is "rampant" you would think a company trusted to deliver sensitive documents would strive to maintain that trust by supporting their customers privacy in every means possible. Rant follows.
The story is simply this.
After receiving an email notification an express package had arrived and there not being any sign of the package at the front or back doors, we notified FedEx. After asking if we checked under the doormat, they offered to have the delivery person back track his steps and to confirm it was delivered to our address. Fine. In the mean time we checked with neighbors to no resolution.
The next day we called FedEx for a status. Seems the driver didn't get the message to do the back track, and that they would get to it the next day. At this point, a package of very personal documents has been out in the wild for 30+ hours.
More discussion with neighbors led us to realize there is a C St. in the next town over, we live on C Ave. in a different zip code. A quick search on Google showed that there was no residence with our street number on C St. But one party of my household being very stubborn drove over there anyway (not me).
Turns out there is a home with our street number. And they did receive a FedEx package not addressed to them. And yes, they had it somewhere. And yes, it was found, and it was opened. But rest assured, they did not read it, and were very sorry.
Anyways, if it wasn't for the email delivery notification, we would still be waiting for a delivery since we never got the pickup notification of the envelope alerting us to something amiss.
Given that this is likely a common issue, that is, delivering a package to the correct street address on a different street in a different town. I expect it could easily be solved with technology. Why not do a simple GPS location check when scanning the delivery of the package to alert the driver he is miles away from the intended delivery location?
Further, why are they so lax in finding a missing package, especially one that was shipped priority. It's obviously important, the premium paid for its delivery says so. Hell, I'd gladly pay a fee for their time if it turns out I didn't check the back door or under the mat. But I shouldn't have to go to the next town to find my package in a sketchy neighborhood and negotiate its return.
Besides, the fedex.com self service shipping website really, really sucks. It's just awful to use.
Let's see how UPS does for now.
Interestingly enough, I'll be out at UPS visiting the ups.com guys out near Atlanta in a few weeks. More process improvement case studies.
Heh, and Wonko just posted how he's switching to FedEx. Lovely.
Leave a comment