Seriously. Customers will appreciate it more and give the company the benefit of the doubt. I’ve had so many instances in the past where if a company had just come clean it would have given them a lot of good will. When we moved to San Francisco about 7 years ago the moving company’s driver got pissed, dropped our trailer off at the yard in Phoenix and drove off. He didn’t tell anyone. Well, the company bullshitted us for 3 days telling us our stuff would be there the next day. Three days we took off of work. No truck. Finally they came clean. It took a threat to start talking to my congressmen about who is in charge of interstate commerce to get a call from the CEO the next day. Granted, the truth wouldn’t have been pretty but it was going to come out anyways. Then, we found out that once they did figure out where the trailer was they sent a 19 year old driver to get it. It’s not legal for this kid to drive across state lines at night due to his age I believe he said but he did it anyways because the company told him to.

So what brought this rant forward? FedEx. Normally FedEx is pretty good. Not this time. I ordered a projector from woot the other day and it shipped very quickly. It even got to the Benicia terminal a day earlier than expected. I might get my projector a day early I think. Wrong. So it goes into a delivery exception while on the truck a day early and returns to the terminal. No biggie, it’s still expected to be here on time. The next day comes and we wait around…and wait….and wait. Then, at 7:50pm we notice that another delivery exception has been noted on the account and that it is going back to the terminal. But this time it gets better. The report says “customer not available or business closed”. My wife was home the entire time waiting in the living room about 15 feet from the front door. The dogs were in the house as well. There is no way the FedEx driver attempted delivery. I called FedEx and asked what happened and of course all the person on the other end could tell me was what I saw on the Internet.

Then the kicker. I ask “aren’t the drivers supposed to leave the yellow door tag indicating that they attempted delivery?” She says it’s a “courtesy” and not “policy” and that he might have run out. I call BS again. This is just ridiculous. It’s obvious that the driver never attempted delivery and just headed back to the terminal.

Well, it gets better. The next day the package never even gets put back on the truck. It just sits at the terminal and I call again. This time they guarantee it will be delivered the next day (today). I’m not holding my breath. The next kicker though, is that yesterday they again show a delivery exception with “customer not available or business closed” yet again. This, even though it never went out for delivery in the first place.

FedEx, get your act together. It’s not so much to ask for a huge company like yourself to actually have a better feedback system on tracking.