Technology & MSG

Jul 3rd, 2008 by Alex

FedEx Ground worker at the loading dock. If you ever need to visit the FedEx Ground distribution facility in Beltsville, Maryland I would recommend calling them first. The number is 301-210-5234, though the corporate customer service people at 1-800-GOFEDEX (1-800-463-3339) won’t tell you that. They’ll be happy to tell you its location — 11750 Baltimore Avenue, Beltsville, MD 20705 (map) — but not the phone number.

They also won’t tell you the whole truth about where your package is. I’d suspect that they do in fact know because they are a business whose business it is to know where their stuff (be it packages, trucks, and personnel) is all the time, but who — besides a FedEx employee — could say for sure? I view FedEx as a black box, just as I do other commercial carriers. I really don’t care how they operate so long as I get my package with minimal effort. That’s what we’re paying for, aren’t we?

I was all set up to have a package delivered to me at home, the contents of which are valuable. The shipper specified that an indirect signature was required (e.g. that of a neighbor or person at the residence) both to accept the package or to leave it on the doorstep unattended. I was at work the first two days that delivery was attempted, the driver leaving a door tag on my door each day. I didn’t want to leave the package on the doorstep unattended, since the door tag makes it very clear that once they leave the package it isn’t their responsibility if it gets damaged or stolen.

The third day I was on my way home and I missed the delivery by 20 minutes, so I called FedEx. I talked to a nice gentlemen who told me that they weren’t able to contact their Home Delivery drivers en-route (which to me suggests a perk built into the increased pricing of Business Delivery), which was unfortunatel because it was pretty likely that the driver would still be in the general area. The guy on the phone gave me the address of the distribution facility and I just resigned myself to picking it up.

Then I thought about it and realized that the package would still be on the truck for a few hours while the driver was making his/her rounds. So I called FedEx again, prepared to ask about the distribution facility’s hours. My goal was to get a phone number so that I could call and see if my package was actually there before I drove over. I got a heavily accented woman who I don’t think understood what I wanted right away. After a few minutes of explaining the situation (not that it’s much of a situation), she told me that she couldn’t tell me when exactly the driver would be returning to the distribution facility but that I should head over there in the afternoon. I asked if she had a phone number for the facility, to which she replied “no, we handle their calls.”

I ended up driving to the facility this afternoon, arriving around 4:30. It took one of the guys there about 10 minutes of looking around before telling me that it wasn’t there. I asked how that could be and one of the distribution guys laid it out, such that the woman on the phone didn’t (but should have): some FedEx drivers don’t come back to the distribution center after their deliveries for the day. They have the option of driving the trucks home. And why shouldn’t they, the trucks themselves are owned by the drivers. Looking at the parking lot of the immense distribution facility and seeing only a few trucks would seem to back this theory. Knowing that some drivers don’t come back to the distribution center to drop off their undeliverables at the end of the day would have been very useful knowledge to have. As usual, the guys on the ground sweating their balls off in a warm warehouse give you the straight dope and not the “friendly” customer service representative at a desk in an air conditioned call center.

Had I known that a signature was required I probably would have had it shipped to my office. At this point, I should have just driven to the store and purchased the item there. By the time I get the thing I’ll have spent enough money on gas to have paid the cost of “free” shipping, never mind my time spent on the matter. I’m maintaining a sense of humor about the whole thing, but I do wish that the customer representatives were able to provide more useful information before I — and probably lots of other people — drive out of their way to pickup packages that aren’t there.

Either the driver will deliver my package on Saturday morning (as the email exception report stated) or he’ll drop it off at distribution center before his run. Either way, I should get my package on Saturday. I’m definitely calling first to make sure it’s there.

This quasi-public service announcement was brought to you by the number 39.