I send my shipping details and they send out the gift card. I did another rant a couple of years ago about my dealings with UPS/Purolator and that experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth with regards to couriers. Good news this time, the card was being mailed with FedEx, great nothing can go wrong with FedEx right? Right? right...
Now initially, I had hope because this package, really just an envelope, was moving really well. It left California on Tuesday and got to St. John's on Friday, that's pretty cool. Then it goes off the rails, have a look.
4/11/14 - 3:26pm - Customer not available
Houston, we have a problem! I work overnights and as such, I'm home every day. All day. Granted I do sleep (shut up all of you, I swear I do) and if you knock on my door and I have been known to wake up.
Also, my landlord (awesome guy, Hi Tom!) works from home, so he's home as well. Every day.
So both of us were here on Friday and there wasn't a knock, actually there wasn't any door tag left on either door or in the mailbox. I find this all out in Friday evening when I get up and check the tracking, so there's nothing I can do about it. Since the next message said "Held at FedEx location for pickup" with the address I do the next logical thing and head up there on Saturday morning. Then I find out their customer service centre is closed on Saturday and Sunday. Very good then.
Patiently waiting out the weekend, I do some checking for a phone number for the local FedEx facility... and here the internet failed me. I could look up the address, I could look up FedEx and a host of information about their facilities, except contact phone numbers. Nowhere, nothing, zip. Weird.
Monday was a failure on my part I'll admit. I totally forgot to go back to the facility on my way home from work Monday morning and didn't remember until I was pulling into my driveway. At that point I wasn't wasting the gas going across town to the depot. But I did want to check on it, so I sent a tweet to @FedExCanadaHelp asking for a local number so I could check on things. I'm still waiting to hear from them over 24 hours later...
Also, I didn't go to bed on Monday until after 4pm. Canada Post brought some bills and junk mail, but no FedEx. No knock, not even an attempt at delivery according to the tracking information.
So this morning (Tuesday April 15th) I go up to the depot after I get off work since it opens at 8:30am. I get my envelope. This is the envelope.
It was marked for a Final Attempt for delivery today, after whatever driver decided to slap a failed delivery attempt on it on Friday, after said driver didn't try the first attempt. This means that if I hadn't gone to the depot this morning, that today's driver could have potentially done the same non-delivery as the first one, called it a failed attempt and my gift card would be on the way back to California.
I thought Purolator was bad with their "Adverse Weather Conditions" while it was overcast and 7 degrees Celsius, but this takes the cake. At least The other crowd tried to cover their asses. FedEx seems content with ye olde "Customer not home" line, no matter how (in my opinion) fictitious the attempted delivery is.
This just reinforces my distaste for courier services, believe me, if I'd had the choice, I would have asked for this to have been sent regular mail. I have confidence in the postal service. It can be slower, but at least it's reliable. The postal service actually knocks on doors, the postal service actually leave door tags, the postal outlets are open on the weekends for customer service and they have contact phone numbers that people can call for assistance locally.
Go Post Office!
Later
- Stylin' Steve
4 comments:
I've had plenty of dealings with Fed/Ex, along with most other couriers in NL and they are all awful. In your case, maybe they had trouble finding your house and just slapped "failed attempt" on it.
I'd be ok with that, and I'd even believe that if it could be the case. Unfortunately, it's not likely. I'm on a main road, the house is numbered both on the house and on the telephone pole at the top of the driveway.
Ugh. Couriers. A HUGE sore spot for me. When a package can get from western Canada to St. John's and then take four freaking days to deliver???!!! Eff that noise! Purolator are at times sketchy, but they're nothing compared to the gross incompetence of UPS.
Maybe if more people used Canada Posts Xpresspost (which is a fantastic service), these bastard couriers wouldn't be killing the postal service.
Agreed Steve.
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