FedEx Blows, Bad Service All Around Options

[windforfun]

I ordered a second new roll bar pad from AA with overnight delivery. Guess what? FedEx lost the package. I've told AA several times to use UPS. Oh & BTW, the first pad that I ordered came with very visible defects. It took about a week to get AA to send me another one. I'm getting too old for this horse shit.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/WTF.gif)

[horizontally-opposed]

Once saw UPS lose a box with an entire magazine issue's worth of slides on the way to Japan for color separations. Those slides—the best from the various photographers in that issue—were lost forever. Whole magazine had to be laid out again with second-draft picks (thankfully not the magazine I was working on, but still awful to see for a fellow editor…and all those photographers).

Once saw USPS lose a rent check, only to get an angry call from my landlord. Drove a new check down there. MONTHS later, I get a picture from her in my email and an apology. The image is our rent check dirty and with a footprint on it (maybe it slid between a wall and a desk?).

Recently saw a major freight operation (pallet) ruin one a 917 center lock nut and its box with the fork on a forklift in Germany or here in the states, each one of those nuts individually numbered for our customers. Of course, the fork nailed the number. The rest of the pallet was just fine, fortunately.

Trying to remember if FedEx has lost or damaged anything in 20+ years of working with them, and coming up with…not much. Now knocking on wood, as I just read this.

Point is, stuff can happen. But I suppose the ratio—for all of the carriers I've worked with—is pretty darn amazing. Even if the occasional misses have been frustrating. I wonder if the ratio is better, worse, or same as it's ever been…but I have to think we're luckier when it comes to moving stuff around the globe than at just about any point in human history.

[Unobtanium-inc]

Once saw UPS lose a box with an entire magazine issue's worth of slides on the way to Japan for color separations. Those slides—the best from the various photographers in that issue—were lost forever. Whole magazine had to be laid out again with second-draft picks (thankfully not the magazine I was working on, but still awful to see for a fellow editor…and all those photographers).

Once saw USPS lose a rent check, only to get an angry call from my landlord. Drove a new check down there. MONTHS later, I get a picture from her in my email and an apology. The image is our rent check dirty and with a footprint on it (maybe it slid between a wall and a desk?).

Recently saw a major freight operation (pallet) ruin one a 917 center lock nut and its box with the fork on a forklift in Germany or here in the states, each one of those nuts individually numbered for our customers. Of course, the fork nailed the number. The rest of the pallet was just fine, fortunately.

Trying to remember if FedEx has lost or damaged anything in 20+ years of working with them, and coming up with…not much. Now knocking on wood, as I just read this.

Point is, stuff can happen. But I suppose the ratio—for all of the carriers I've worked with—is pretty darn amazing. Even if the occasional misses have been frustrating. I wonder if the ratio is better, worse, or same as it's ever been…but I have to think we're luckier when it comes to moving stuff around the globe than at just about any point in human history.

I shot a group once for SPIN magazine, it was really hard getting the whole group together, FEDEX lost the film, they did deliver an empty envelope. Never got the group together again, lost in time.