Why does FedEx suck so much for car part deliveries? (also, GRM sponsors, ship via another company!)

We have seen FedEx deliveries constantly miss their delivery dates recently too.  I thought it was just us.  Have one "pending delivery" that is going on 2 weeks past the original delivery estimate.  Just appears to be stationary, and contacting FedEx and the seller they both say "we will look into it and get back to you".  Last correspondence from either was 2 days ago.  At this point I am with the OP, if I see you ship with FedEx I will be more hesitant to buy if it is something I need in a hurry (and most things you order are things you don't want to wait weeks for).

Am I the only one who's never noticed a difference between the various delivery companies? Other than the color of the box.

My two most recent experiences with FedEx here were less than great ... I ordered floor liners and trunk liner from Weathertech for the new Civic Si.  Based on product being in stock vs. needing to run through production, both item types were shipped separately, about a week between trunk liner arriving first and the floor liners arriving later.  Both shipments came with the factory Weathertech boxes that were absolutely brutalized.  As in, looking like they were run over by the frickin' truck.  Fortunately, given the nature of what was inside the boxes, the products were fine. 

To add further data, a good friend also placed a Weathertech floor liner order for his new Ridgeline a week prior to my order, and lives in a very different delivery area of town.  His order showed up brutalized also, but with the product in good shape despite this. 

Do I blame Weathertech?  Nope, but I did provide feedback to them for what that is worth.  Do I blame FedEx?  Yup ... the only saving grace was what the product was, and how impervious is was to damage despite the lousy handling by the contracted delivery company. 

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Am I the only one who's never noticed a difference between the various delivery companies? Other than the color of the box.

Don't say that to a Canadian. The hate for cross-border UPS burns with a red hot passion in the great white north. 

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

I usually just don't do business with someone who only ships thru FedEx......they are that bad.

This is the part that businesses need to pay attention to.  If you are shipping via Fedex, I will shop somewhere else.  Got it?

1988RedT2 said:

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

I usually just don't do business with someone who only ships thru FedEx......they are that bad.

This is the part that businesses need to pay attention to.  If you are shipping via Fedex, I will shop somewhere else.  Got it?

Same, unless there is absolutely no choice (as is the case with the current UK order I'm awaiting), I will buy elsewhere simply to avoid FedEx. I won't complain to the seller, because the seller won't get my business in the first place. 

To follow up the initial post, my UK shipment magically appeared in Memphis this morning and now shows a delivery date by 10:30am tomorrow. So, we will see what time it actually arrives. I fully expect it around 5pm Friday based on FedEx tracking precedent. 

I wish there was a way to make saying '99.5% of the time it works' make missing/damaged/late packages magically right again. It basically just points out that almost all their accountability is to people other than the ones they're screwing. Im sure that's true of most of them. How do you improve it? Understaffed? Could try asking nicer? Or could try paying more. Could try training more thoroughly? Investing in more intuitive and reliable systems for the drivers? Sounds like it costs money! Just get E36 M3ty with drivers who screw up and increase consequences for doing a bad job? Maybe, unless they already hate their job and were looking for an excuse to jump ship. Unless you pay them more. 

I guess at the end of the day the .5% of people who are getting crap service are subsidizing the low low prices for the 99.5% who get their stuff on time so that the shipper doesn't have to invest as much in wages, training, and systems to do a better job.   Here's a crack, fall in it! I'll now take 99.5% of the money, please!

Honestly, I don't really do enough business with one shipper or ship valuable enough items to contribute more than anecdotes. I've rarely had a shipping issue that didn't end up resolved with some minor level of headache. 

Recently i bought a Ryobi impact that isn't sold in the US. I bought it on the Amazon UK website using my normal Amazon login. They charged me about $4 for currency conversion, $20 to ship it across the ocean, i got it less than 2 weeks later in perfect shape. The last thing i had tried to buy from the UK was a $50 shirt that i eventually had to give up on, although that was entirely the seller shop's fault and nothing to do with shippers. 

You can minimize losses with good packaging. We almost never have stuff damaged in transit because our shipping team packs to survive anything. 

While customers might say they won't buy from one company because of their shipping choices (and every shipping company gets hate like this), really what they don't want to do is pay for shipping. The misperceptions out there about how cheap it is to ship things and how easy it is are way out of line with reality. 

The shipping company that is struggling right now is USPS. We've seen a real drop in their service level of late. I know there's a lot going on there and I think some of it is in the Denver sorting stations specifically so it's affecting us abnormally, but packages are arriving weeks late with even less than usual tracking. 

In reply to HoserRacing :

I find it hard to believe that people don't want to work. Basically all of human history runs counter to this. I find it much more believable that pay and/or conditions make retention difficult. Labor is no less immune to supply, demand, and competition than any other aspect of the economy. 

I own a small company that manufactures and ships childrens coin banks. www.bigbellybanks.com.  I've been shipping them since 1993.  I ship many thousands of banks a year. 

I used UPS for the majority of the time.  Tried USPS.  For the past 4 years I've used FEDEX.  I have to say that FEDEX has, on the average, delivered faster and with less problems than UPS. And, way better than the USPS.  

Keith Tanner said:

While customers might say they won't buy from one company because of their shipping choices (and every shipping company gets hate like this), really what they don't want to do is pay for shipping. The misperceptions out there about how cheap it is to ship things and how easy it is are way out of line with reality.

While this may be true of some, it does not describe me.  I find the companies that offer a menu of shipping options, spelling out cost, carrier, and expected delivery to be the best.  I will gladly pay a couple bucks more to get better service (i.e. avoid Fedex), or expedite shipment.

What (some) companies fail to recognize is that a buying "experience" can be almost completely shaped by that knucklehead that drops the box on your customer's doorstep (or heaven knows where else).  You can carry the inventory, take the order, and ship the order and do a damn fine job of it all, but if the driver or some other cog in the (cut-rate) shipping company botches the delivery, that reflects on YOU.

Edit:  The other obvious advantage to giving your customer the ability to choose the shipping company, is that if he picks Fedex, and Fedex sucks, then he really can't blame anyone but himself.

Lets just say that it describes a very large majority of the population. Other than the part of taking personal responsibility - if we offer a shipping option, we are vouching for their capabilities and will be held responsible for their mistakes. 

I must admit, I've found Fedex to be the worst of the bunch down here too..  Made even worse that it's a local 'rep', not even a real Fedex office.  They have also been the worst for trumping up additional charges, even charging per package in a single delivery for admin/warehousing etc.  Best by far is DHL, normally make or beat the delivery estimate, and very few issues.  If given the option, I will generally pay more when ordering stuff to avoid using them. 

I can't really knock on any service more than any other. DHL has probably been the best for me, but that might simply be because the sample size is smallest.

Only semi-related: Non-prime Amazon shipping is the wild west. You might get it tomorrow on a Sunday, or you might get it in 8 months after you've already bought something else, nobody knows.

Cactus said:

Only semi-related: Non-prime Amazon shipping is the wild west. You might get it tomorrow on a Sunday, or you might get it in 8 months after you've already bought something else, nobody knows.

If it's non-Prime, that means it's not being fulfilled from Amazon. It's just being sold via their front end. It can literally be on a slow boat from China, but that's why it only costs $2 to ship. 

What about the classic "it'll be Prime once it actually ships!".   Gotta love that one. 

Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) said:

May be a local phenomena but we have packages out for delivery and then get "weather delay" with some of the nicest weather. Never have an issue with USPS or UPS here.

We had that happen with a package recently. I thought, "It's 85 and sunny, what could possibly be the weather delay?"

Fwiw fedex "couldn't locate address" then relabeled something i sold for $320 and delivered it to the wrong house, and address comes up just fine on every map program.  So I'm waiting for claims to do something about it

FedEx is the one that held on to my axle for 2 or 3 weeks because they told me I didn't need a commercial invoice for an international shipment.  And it took five people and three attempts for the commercial invoice to get attached to the package.

I'm waiting on a powerstop brake package for the three pedal minivan.  According to FedEx it's out for delivery right now.  But also according to FedEx, it arrived at my local facility at 0600 today and 34 minutes later was "out for delviery".  I am skeptical that they were able to get it sorted and put on a truck that fast, but we shall see....

I tend to have equal problems with any of the delivery services, but then I’m also in a typical suburban neighborhood, so my house is easy to find.  However, for UPS, I’ve noticed if it comes through a certain location (can’t remember it right now, but as soon as I see it in tracking I know it) in northern Ohio, I can guess that the package is probably getting delayed, improperly routed, or lost.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Am I the only one who's never noticed a difference between the various delivery companies? Other than the color of the box.

No

1988RedT2 said:

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

I usually just don't do business with someone who only ships thru FedEx......they are that bad.

This is the part that businesses need to pay attention to.  If you are shipping via Fedex, I will shop somewhere else.  Got it?

That might work, except for all the people that have not had more problems wit FedEx... 

Keith Tanner said:

You can minimize losses with good packaging. We almost never have stuff damaged in transit because our shipping team packs to survive anything. 

While customers might say they won't buy from one company because of their shipping choices (and every shipping company gets hate like this), really what they don't want to do is pay for shipping. The misperceptions out there about how cheap it is to ship things and how easy it is are way out of line with reality. 

The shipping company that is struggling right now is USPS. We've seen a real drop in their service level of late. I know there's a lot going on there and I think some of it is in the Denver sorting stations specifically so it's affecting us abnormally, but packages are arriving weeks late with even less than usual tracking. 

I'm absolutely willing to pay for shipping and will pay more for UPS. 

I want to receive my package, FedEx doesn't deliver my package. They are as far as I'm concerned not a shipping company. Even when I moved to a different area they still totally sucked.

The guitar that was damaged? It was in a hard case btw. The packaging wasn't the problem

wae said:

FedEx is the one that held on to my axle for 2 or 3 weeks because they told me I didn't need a commercial invoice for an international shipment.  And it took five people and three attempts for the commercial invoice to get attached to the package.

I'm waiting on a powerstop brake package for the three pedal minivan.  According to FedEx it's out for delivery right now.  But also according to FedEx, it arrived at my local facility at 0600 today and 34 minutes later was "out for delviery".  I am skeptical that they were able to get it sorted and put on a truck that fast, but we shall see....

My skepticism was unfounded.  Parts were ordered yesterday at around 0900 and arrived via FedEx Ground today at around 1330.  And I don't think even HDS could mangle brake rotors.

In reply to AaronT :

Believe it.  I'm friends with quite a few business owners, and my community lost out on a planned expansion for a national company when their existing operation couldn't get enough people to show up to work and/or pass a drug test for jobs that even included health insurance.  They built 15 miles away in the next town, and people showed up.  A large percentage of our school population is on free meals, but the parents would rather draw off of the government then get an actual job.  2 of my tufters are actively trying to hire people, and no one will work.  The last person one of them hired swore they needed a job, worked one day and never showed back up again.  One of the restaurants that is probably the busiest place in town on Sundays ended up closing on Sundays because they couldn't get enough people to work to stay open 6 days a week.  Another restaurant has only been open when it can because they can't get enough staff to show up as scheduled.    The competition the businesses are currently facing is government subsidies.  When they can get unemployment plus $600/wk to not work, they're not going to work.  But in our community, the issue has been going on longer than that, it's just been made worse by current situations.  

When you volunteer at a school and you hear a kid tell you that their ambition is to draw, you tell them you like art, and they look at you all weird before they tell you that they want to draw a check like their momma and grandma, it's pretty sad.  I have no idea how my community can break this generational cycle, but it's a real problem.  It goes against every thing I was raised by, but it doesn't mean it's not real.