In a debacle with FedEx shipment

[Schumi]

OK braintrust... I need some suggestions. Check out this problem, I'll make it quick with bullet point style:



-Ordered an expensive bit of music kit. Gear was backordered and I knew this, but it took a while to ship and in that time I actually moved out of my house and no longer live to the address it got shipped to. I live back in LA now and the gear got shipped via Fed Ex up to where I used to live in Fremont. I wasn't planning on moving quite when I did but that is the way it worked out and now I'm not there to get this package and have no way of being there. A new tenant has taken over my old house and I do not know them.

-I put a 'vacation hold' on the FedEx page for my address there which stopped them from trying to deliver the package for now. The package requires a signature but as we all know they don't actually look at that, so I am worried that if it were to be taken to the new tenant they may just sign for it and keep it.

-There is no option online to change the destination address of the package. FedEx themselves say they are not allowed to do this, period.

-I called the company I ordered the product from and they said they would attempt to contact FedEx and have FedEx ship the package to a different FedEx facility near me where I could pick the package up, but I never heard back from them.

-package is sitting in a fedex warehouse in Newark according to my tracking number still. the vacation hold is keeping it there but I am still under what to do.


Sometimes I hate the way things have become so procedure-based. I can't just call the desk at the fedex warehouse and tell them to slap a new address on the box, even when I can give them the tracking number, the phone number, the name and the address on the package. They just won't do it.


I may be screwed here. I guess I could just let them deliver it and hope to god that the new tenant looks at the package before they sign for it and tell FedEx to return it to sender so I can get a refund. But if they accept it.... it is a good as gone. $1000 of music gear down the drain.

[gtc]

I thought that if you asked to pick up the package from a FedEx location, you could specify which location. Maybe I'm wrong.

Sometimes in these situations, you just have to keep talking to different people until you find someone who actually wants to help the customer and not just follow policy.

[MysticLlama]

The shipper can call FedEx and redirect, we do at least a few of these a month at work. Usually we catch it after a delivery exception, but even then, one of the reasons is "recipient doesn't live at this address", so they should be able to do it.

Depending on where it is in the system there can be a charge, but it's usually not bad.

[Schumi]

yes I had the shipper try that and they said they would but they have been unresponsive lately.

So I took gtc's advice and just kept calling different numbers.

Wow, talk about a difference in service- I had called the FexEd main customer center a few days ago to try and get this fixed and got nothing but 'no' 'no' 'no' for every question.

I just now finally tracked down the LOCAL number of the fedex warehouse where the package is actually sitting, and got a nice girl on the phone who completely understood what was going on and said she would get the address changed and sent out to me tonight hopefully.

Completely different story.


Well, let's hope this one is resolved then.

[vash]

Sympathy pains here. RWest and I are watching USPS play postal pingpong with a box. I messed up the zip code and I think I might be the ONLY human to ever have made that mistake. It's like when the ghost buster "crossed the streams". It has caused a rip in the time-space continuum and they are flummoxed. If any of your postage deliveries go missing. I apologize. It was me. Sorry. I buckled USPS. There might be a senate hearing.

[masraum]

Wow, congrats on what sounds like a good resolution assuming it works out. Dont buy a lottery ticket or play golf in a lightning storm. You just used up your luck for a while.

[rwest]

Hey Vash,

The package went to Concord today for the third time!

I sent Vash a small 2 day Priority box on the first of March- he had inadvertently given me a wrong zip code. It is now the 18th of March and they just keep sending it back and forth between three or four Post Offices, yesterday we both made contact with them and gave them the proper zip- crazy, you would think that after the first wrong address/zip, the system would flag it for a human to intervene and figure it out.

Now we wait and see if they send it to the right Post Office tomorrow.

[rusnak]

your racing experience does not help you here?

[cashflyer]

Glad you got it sorted out.

For future reference:
FedEx Delivery Manager - Customize Your Home Delivery

Be part of the plan — request a new delivery location or time, hold your package at a FedEx location, sign for your package in advance, provide specific delivery instructions or request a vacation hold.

[Schumi]

Originally Posted by cashflyer

Glad you got it sorted out.

For future reference:
FedEx Delivery Manager - Customize Your Home Delivery

Yeah, I have done that with other packages as I have a FedEx online account, but for some reason this package did not allow that to be done online. This was a ground package, and I guess there are no special options for ground versus express, simply because it is the cheaper shipping option, which is ridiculous considering it is all the same system.

That and I was led astray by the customer service people who told me over and over it wasn't possible to change the destination.


We will see if the girl on the phone at the warehouse comes thru for me. If not, back to calling until I find someone who does.