Why @FedEx pissed me off today (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the @UPS Even More)

Why @FedEx pissed me off today (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the @UPS Even More), a photo by thepetecom on Flickr.

Ugh. Can you believe it? I can. It seems like businesses really don't like doing their jobs. Funny, you'd think they'd understand that by properly training their employees and paying them well, the job will get done properly and everyone will be happy. But no, hiring people who understand how to read instructions on doorcode panels (or teaching them how to understand doorcode panel instructions) is too much effort for FedEx. When I called them, they said that another attempt would be made tomorrow before 7pm, despite the fact that it was supposed to be delivered today before 4:30. So, seeing as it was a driver-error and not a me-error or a sender-error, I asked them if they could deliver it by 4:30 tomorrow. They said they'd try. Then I got a call later on from FedEx confirming that what I asked was what they heard >_<

LONG LIVE UPS! I get stuff delivered via UPS and my regular delivery guy is AWESOME. He never has trouble getting in the front door of my building, he remembers my name (not so hard as it's on the label) and always seems friendly. I've never seen the same FedEx guy in a row--it's always someone new and one driver even admonished me for not having the doorcode on the shipping label. Like *I* sent it to myself or something.

I know this is all under the category of #FirstWorldProblems, but for me, it's more about truth-in-advertising. Don't lie to me and say you'll do something and then don't do it. Just tell me you're going to be lame so I don't have my schedule screwed up. It's fine, be as lame as you want--just TELL me. Why bother lying when we know you'll suck anyway, right?

MOVING AT THE SPEED OF BUSINESS, INDEED!

Are you like me? This past holiday season I spent a lot of money online. I'm a greedy bastard, so I didn't really spend too much of that money on anyone else, I bought myself lots of cool stuff. Hey - I had to spend that Christmas money somewhere! Anyway, so I ordered all this stuff, right? I got lucky on a couple of auctions at egghead.com and eBay. I got some old Atari game consoles and three old Syquest 1 gb removable media drives ($41 a pop!). the Syquest drives came first - or rather, the extra cartridges I ordered came within two days of placing my order. Very nice seeing as I had no drive yet. The internal drive came a week later. Pretty lame since I spent $12 on shipping - you'd think twelve bucks would get me second or third day delivery at the most. To top that off the drive was defective. I spent a week trying to get the damn thing to work which was good because that's how long it took for the first of the two external drives to arrive. Luckily, it worked fine. It's now almost mid January and I have yet to see either a refund or the second external drive I bought. My Atari consoles were supposedly shipped about a week ago. Another $10 was spent to get them sent to me. I'm not expecting much.

You're probably wondering where my point is, well HERE: In this world of overnight deliveries, why is it that my credit card is charged days before my order is even PROCESSED?!? Days after THAT, my order is finally SHIPPED. And THEN - THEN - I discover that some moron sent it UPS ground - the SLOWEST DELIVERY METHOD KNOWN TO MAN. $12 to get something that would never show up. NICE. UPS promises on their commercials that they move at the speed of business. Well, having been in the business world, I know that the speed of business is insanely slow. For once I see truth in advertising. THE BASTARDS! But then, it's not just UPS that is messing up - it's these online services - when you walk into a store and buy something. They charge you and you get to bring it with you right away. Now, I understand that the nature of online shopping is that you have to wait for your item to show up. So, how about a compromise - THEY don't get my MONEY until they SHIP my STUFF! I think that's fair, don't you?