Thursday, July 24, 2008

Priority Overnight My Ass

No CMP rifle pics today, thanks to the wonders of FedEx. They were shipped priority overnight yesterday, picked up by FedEx at 1:42 PM. I worked from home this morning to be there to sign for the package. FedEx's tracking site showed that they were to be delivered by 10:30 AM. They arrived at Boston at 9:23 AM. I figured at this point that they weren't going to make 10:30, since I'm about a 45 minute drive from Boston(with no traffic). Then at 11:12, they arrived at another fedex facility which is half an hour from Boston, and 45 minutes from me. The tracking now says Delivery Exception: "Package at station, arrived after courier dispatch" At this point, I headed into the office since I had a 1PM meeting, and there was no way they'd make it in time.

I'm not sure if they'll attempt delivery some time this afternoon, or if it'll get bumped to tomorrow. How often does FedEx totally miss promised service like this? I use them at work to overnight stuff semi-regularly. I do product development, so generally it's not absolutely critical that the package arrives overnight. I remember one case where the package got delayed to the following day. It seems pretty rare that they hit the promised 10:30 AM delivery time.

Has FedEx service always been this marginal, or is it a more recent thing? Obviously, waiting an extra day for my rifles isn't the end of the world, but it does hurt my confidence in FedEx. What do businesses do when something is critical to operations and has to arrive the next day? Put the low man on the totem pole in a car and make him drive all night?

3 comments:

JD said...

Fex-Ex has been much better than UPS in my experience.

I do have to say they have missed overnight shipments on me. They have done this while I was on the road for work waiting on parts to fix customer equipments years ago.

It is not a new problem, but it doesn't happen that often. . . That being said there is Murphy s law to deal with. . . .

doubletrouble said...

Well, I guess my experience is opposite that of JD's.

Fed-Ex blows.

Especially with deliveries here (you know where I am). They bitch about the road in JUNE!

Fagttaboutit in December.

GunGeek said...

One day when I was living in NJ (spit-tooey) we had a big storm that stopped pretty much everything. I had a FedEx package guaranteed to be in by Noon the next day. When it finally showed up around 4:00, I commented on how I was surprised it got there at all. He said it would have been there sooner, but they had to deliver all the guaranteed by 10:00 packages first, even though that would make virtually every package that day late and they'd be refunding a whole lot of money.

The corporate philosophy is that if you paid for earlier delivery, you were going to get earlier delivery even if it meant not delivering other packages by their deadlines so they can keep at least some of their fees.