FedEx Beltsville Distribution Facility Phone Number
Jul 3rd, 2008 by Alex
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.
Amen… FedEx is a pain in the ass to working America…. we all have jobs too ya know FedEx… we kinda have to be there… regardless of whether or not you have a package to deliver.
Andy: It doesn’t work for everyone, but I there must be a lot of people who get packages delivered to their place of work.
Man. You are the first result for any kind of search about FedEx in Beltsville, which is pretty awesome. I’m currently going through having to pick up my package there for the first time, and I can’t find any information about facility hours (main FedEx line told me Monday through Friday, no specific hours) AND, to top it all off, nobody is answering the phone number you so helpfully provided. Did you get any info about the hours of the facility? I’m guessing since FedEx is oh-so-convenient, it’ll be approximately 9:30 to 4:30. Great since I live and work in the heart of downtown DC and keep my car in Arlington, VA. Just great. Heh.
The thing that gets me the most is this: they are a business whose business it is to know where their stuff (be it packages, trucks, and personnel) is all the time
I keep telling reminding myself of that, and the more I do, the more frustrated I get. ARGH!
KateR: I had the operating hours written down on the same slip as the phone number, but discarded it after I got my package. Wish that I had included that information, since they — just as you said — aren’t answering the phone over there.
Fedex Home Delivery located in Beltsville, MD is the absolute worst! I have resigned to notifying every shipper not to ship merchandise through the Home Delivery service and to use Standard Fedex or UPS. I can not believe FedEx would take something that ran smoothly and create a separate company division and staff it with bodies consisting of useless human flesh. They fabricate stories about delivery, they can’t seem to find your package location, they are open at hours that are not convenient to the working class (09:00AM - 5:00PM) and closed on Monday! WTF??? This is a just short list of complaints….. Listing them all would exceed the limitations of this post!
Someone in the shipping process made the genius level mistake of only entering my unit number, city and state without even a hint of a street address. They claimed they attempted to deliver my package twice. I wasn’t shocked when no one could explain to me where they attempted to ship my package and where they thought a GPS would take them if they plugged in my unit number and city. Common sense is not so common because apparently someone who lives at “Unit X” was unavailable to recieve the package. After several conversations with FedEx customer service (if you want to even call it that) the representative proclaimed he could give me the address to the facility but he was prohibited from giving me the phone number. Not surprisingly my reaction was “So you can give me the address to leave work and drive to the facility, but you cannot give me the phone number so that I can call ahead and let them know I’m coming?” He apologized so many times without providing a solution that I got frustrated and ended the call. I googled the distribution center and your post was in the top of my results. I tried calling the number you listed but after several rings the operator said the number was disconnected. After 10 minutes of trial and error someone answered at this number: (301) 210-0534
Hope this helps someone else. From now on, I will adamently refuse to allow them to ship anything to me!
FedX is the worst organization (if you can call it that) to deal with. An attempted delivery was made and a door tag with a number but no time was left on our door. The next day since we knew they would attempt another delivery, my husband not only sat outside on the front porch, but also the front door was open so that the driver would know that someone was home. Again the package was not delivered and when we called to find out where the package was or if we could pick up the package ourselves we were told that the driver attempted a delivery and no one was home. WTF of course that was a blantant lie because my husband was there sitting on the porch waiting for the delivery. These contract driver are complete LIARS!!! After going through customer service and trying to get a number to call before attempting to go to the Beltsville MD office I tried to get the customer service representative to give me a phone number and was told the same thing that the number is private and that they don’t give out the number. Again, WTF this 2010 and you can be in touch with anyone in the world why not the Beltsville station? Needless to say after a finally got someone at the Beltsville station (but only because I insisted that someone from customer service contact the station while I remained on the phone. I found out again that the driver was gone for the day and that the package was there, but locked in his truck. I tend to believe that the package was in the truck at the driver”s place of residence. Anyway thank God I didn’t drive over from SE DC. So, now they have to make a request that the driver attempted another delivery. I have all of the names of the FedX personnell that I spoke to and I also told them that if that package is not delivered tomorrow someone’s head is going to roll. Give me a break, FedX is some CRAP! Save yourself the trouble.