Fedex issues


For years, I have made it a standard to use Fedex for shipping of audio equipment and I think most of us have too. I might be changing my mind after a few incidents in the last few weeks.
In our neighborhood, we have had many issues with fedex delivering to the wrong address and more disturbing, been seen throwing small bags/boxes from a distance to the clients front doors. Our neighbors had their Ring cameras record these incidents and when I went out online and did some searching, this is fairly common practice.
Yeaterday, I had a shipment coming to me from an audio vendor that was worth $7,000 and there was a signature required when delivered. There was an issue where the vendor used my old address instead of my current address but I thought the new homeowners would see it was sent to me and tell the fedex guy it wasn’t theirs and he would take it back to the warehouse. That’s not what occurred. Nobody was home, so the fedex guy signed for it himself and left it out on the porch where anybody could have picked it up. The new homeowners called me when they got home to tell me my package was sitting outside. The vendor that shipped the piece asked for the digital signature and it was a line with 2 dots, but fedex indicates that I signed for it, I’m 30 miles from my old house.

What good is having paid for a signature when delivered if the carrier is going to sign for it and leave it out in the open? If somebody would have stolen the box, I bet there would be a fight since fedex claims it was signed for and delivered.
Maybe UPS has fixed their issue with dropping packages up to 5’ from conveyer to conveyer.
rbstehno
"adult signature required is the way to go, not just 'signature required'.
They have to see the exact name on the ID for the parcel to be delivered.

The other thing is to have it held at the depot for pick up, and then the Id has to be shown.

I used to do that for all parcels to Indonesia, and the like (a few other countries, Like the entire eastern block of Europe). 

If the buyer wanted the product to be shipped to them in Indonesia, then they had to agree to those terms. Shipping depot delivery/pickup only, show id. The end.
I was sitting at home expecting delivery of some very expensive Synergistic Research Euphoria interconnects, which usually FedEx would deliver afternoon or evening, so was surprised to see email saying they had been delivered. Especially since I was right there at home and never heard the door bell. Even more suspicious, my wife was up and in the room right next to the front door at the time delivery was supposedly made. 

Went right out and looked and found nothing. Never had anything like this before. FedEx, far as I can tell, did absolutely NOTHING to find out what happened. The reason I say NOTHING I won't go into details by suffice to say when something like this happened with UPS the driver himself called me personally to tell me where he left the package. UPS driver was really clever, let me just say that. And professional. And major cred for responsiveness.

I am leaving out a whole bunch of details ALL of which reflect nothing but BADLY on FedEx. I am leaving out a whole bunch of details of half a dozen other FedEx shipments tracking experiences. FedEx has totally lost it. I would never ship with FedEx again, if I had the choice. 
I stopped using Fedex years ago when, instead of delivering my HSU subwoofer, the driver snuck quietly to my front door and put a try again tag on the door. I was home the entire time and he never even attempted to ring a doorbell or in any way notify anyone of his presence. He simply did not want to carry a heavy package up my hill of a driveway.

Unfortunately, I had too many occurrences like that with Fedex and decided to part company. I’m not saying all Fedex drivers are bad, but it seems a larger % are when compared to the service offered by competitors.

One reason for this is that only Fedex Express are Fedex employees (and Fedex express, while expensive, is almost always good service). Fedex Ground is run as a separate company within Fedex and the drivers are all contractors with no allegiance, loyalty or pride of ownership or brand (and a high turnover rate).

Since then, I have used USPS for all small packages and UPS for all large packages and items that USPS will not handle. I have never had the first issue, lost package, late delivery or otherwise with USPS. As another poster stated earlier, my USPS driver puts all of my packages and mail by my side door out of view from the road. The icing on the cake is that USPS is also less expensive than any of the others.

UPS has been fairly good as well, albiet usually more expensive for the same class of service. My only real complaint with UPS is a total lack of predictability of delivery time. My USPS deliveries show up at the same time, every day, six days a week. My UPS deliveries (all using the same class of service) might show up at 11am one day and 8pm the next making planning for things like JIT production challenging.

One last word - my business is located 100 yards from a major Fedex hub and shipping office, but the service has been so bad and expensive that I happily drive 5 miles to USPS or 9 miles to UPS. When I first leased the building, I had images in my head of being able to pallet jack outgoing shipments over to Fedex two or three times a day, but alas, it was not to be.
Y-A-W-N....FedEx dropped the ball so call them & resolve the issue. Now,  let's talk about something pertinent like audio. 
FedEx is just awful! After getting my signature, they tried to just leave my new speakers at the end of the driveway. It’s a long driveway, btw. The 2 boxes were each almost 6 ft. tall and each box weighed over 100 lbs. I made the driver get the dolly he just moved the speakers out of the truck with get it back out of the truck and move them into my living room, all the while listening to his sigh fest the entire time. I even gave him a cold bottle of water, which he didn’t even thank me for.