FedEx Says Retailers Should Be Paying More for Web Delivery

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I'm not sure FedEx has thought this through. Doesn't the company realize that retailers could easily find another shipper instead of caving in to demands for more money? Imagine what would happen if online retailers dropped FedEx in favor of UPS or USPS? :eek:

The company that handles your packages when they absolutely, positively have to get there overnight — or at least, sometime this week we hope — has been spending a lot more money on improving their own business, but isn’t bringing in as much as they had hoped, executives announced with recent financial filings. Capital expenditures this year have increased to $4.8 billion, but their third quarter net income still managed to drop by 19%.
 
Hah... It is a hassle for me to ship Fedex where I work.

If we call them for a pickup, they may or may not come the same day. A lot of the time they will not show up till the next day even if the call is put in first thing in the morning.

So much easier for me to just drive to a place that ships Fedex and drop my packages off there if they need to go out right away.

AND they don't have a Windows program like UPS does.

It is a huge hassle to set up shipments through their web page as well.

Fix your crap FedEx and then maybe you are worth using as as shipper.
 
Fedex and UPS are an effective duopoly in the United States. USPS really doesn't count since both UPS and FedEx move the majority of USPS boxes anyway. The saving grace for FedEx is the RLA Act when compared to UPS.
 
Hasn't Fedex always been more expensive than all the rest to begin with? Not sure how this helps them, especially since USPS has a real tracking system as part of delivery confirmation now.
 
Fedex used to be a great company once upon a time. About ten years ago they began a rapid slide in the mediocrity shit show we know and love today. UPS took the brunt of that great Amazon XMas debacle a couple years ago but Fedex was there with their share of late deliveries too. Ever since then Amazon has expanded their use of the USPS and regional shippers like OnTrac and so far I don't think it's worked out that badly for them. Amazon has more than enough money to start their own Amazon exclusive shipping service and make it work anywhere they have a warehouse, and they probably will someday soon.
 
Being only a recipient, I don't care who delivers my packages as long as they ring the doorbell when they leave the package. The guys in brown don't do that all the time so I prefer Fedex. Plus UPS's website won't let you save the tracking number as part of your Favorites or Bookmarks, so its harder to track my packages. Otherwise, let them charge what they want and I'll pay it.
 
snicker if retailers dropped fedex we would be back to paying a hundred dollars to ship a videocard... most retailers get a discount on bulk orders, meaning they ship a thousand packages a month so fed ex can plan for that flight to be full... and anyone shipping small amounts pay more since it means a driver going to a different address and so forth... I wonder if fed ex noticed that while most get shipped they may all go in different directions... unless they manged to figure out how to get a large amount of people from each area to order all at once...
 
Being a dispatcher at UPS in the midwest, I can tell you that most customer pickups are well over a thousand packages. Now, I only deal with feeders (semi trucks) not the package cars that go door to door. The general way it works for us is a customer calls whenever saying, "Hey we need an extra trailer to load into tonight", we say "Okay", and go do it.

I'd love to do my job at FedEx if you say they may or may not come the same day :joyful::joyful:

Amazon is supposedly building another distribution warehouse right next to us in the next year, but its all so hush hush I can't tell if its actually happening. We're getting almost 100% of the volume if it is real.
 
dwd999 said:
Being only a recipient, I don't care who delivers my packages as long as they ring the doorbell when they leave the package. The guys in brown don't do that all the time so I prefer Fedex. Plus UPS's website won't let you save the tracking number as part of your Favorites or Bookmarks, so its harder to track my packages. Otherwise, let them charge what they want and I'll pay it.
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Yep that is my biggest problem with UPS. I do have a dog though who is usually a pretty effective "doorbell" when they drop stuff at the door. :)
 
UPS has been a nightmare where I currently live. Not even bothering to knock on the door. They just throw the package at my door and leave, if they even bother to deliver at all. Fedex on the other hand has been wonderful in comparison. I think that has more to do with my local driver though. Dude is a shit bag.
 
thekipper said:
Fedex and UPS are an effective duopoly in the United States. USPS really doesn't count since both UPS and FedEx move the majority of USPS boxes anyway. The saving grace for FedEx is the RLA Act when compared to UPS.
Click to expand...
Other way around Fedex and UPS both use USPS as final delivery services for undesirable shipping items, it's also doesn't count because by charter USPS isn't allowed to compete.
 
It's all about location and numbers really. I respect my drivers where I work, but because of my location UPS is slower and more expensive. On top of that, I've had more UPS packages lost or damaged in transit than FedEx. Couple that with the extra information I get from FedEx, better problem fixing times, and a simpler, more effective shipping method (we have some 3rd party crap) and I can't feasibly ask our customers, buyers, and other people to use them here. So again, that's just speaking to where I am. I've definitely seen how a single driver or hub can completely alter your perception of a place though. I used to work at a place where the FedEx Express driver was in full "i don't give a damn" mode and would throw stuff at us or show up way later than he was supposed to. The only reason we used him, and I'm not kidding, is that we could file lots of damage claims and late delivery claims against him so we paid next to nothing in shipping or insurance claims. Also, if something was late to a customer, we could blame FedEx no matter what. It was the worst and yet most profitable driver I've ever seen. I swear it felt like he played soccer inside his truck with packages though.

Oh.. and DHL sucks. I've used them 4 times to ship to European countries and they couldn't even get the country right. It specifically said to ship to the Czech Republic and they kept misshipping it to f'ing Macedonia, causing all kinds of delays. That's pretty damn pathetic for a european company to forget the nations in Europe.

UPS delivery isn't just non-friendly to consumers either. As a business, we had something shipped that was stupidly expensive and electronic, those bastards delivered late to a business that was closed, left it outside over the weekend during a rainstorm, and .. not surprisingly.. we got a call saying never to use them again.. among other angry requests. I've even had a package straight up get lost on the truck immediately after pickup. It just vanished. And because our UPS driver doesn't scan things when he picks them up, I couldn't make a claim. I was so mad. The only time I was madder is when my UPS driver for a home delivery left a full computer outside my door on a nice fall day in a neighborhood so bad that even pizza delivery wouldn't go there. As soon as I saw that package was dropped off, I called them to confirm he just left it without even ringing the doorbell, and I drove 100+ mph to get home from work early, burned some PTO, and thankfully I beat the schoolkids home so they couldn't steal it.

Also, the only thing I'm seeing in that article isn't that they are planning something for raising rates, more that they are targetting non-business places like your regular ebay person who work out of their home or ship out of their home. It pulls their drivers from Commercial areas, forces investigations into the residential/commercial status of a property, and overall is a problem that needs addressing. It's not really the product itself, it's more the people who keep shipping to and from their home. I could be reading too much into it though. It's something to look into, I'll say that much.
 
thekipper said:
Fedex and UPS are an effective duopoly in the United States. USPS really doesn't count since both UPS and FedEx move the majority of USPS boxes anyway. The saving grace for FedEx is the RLA Act when compared to UPS.
Click to expand...
There are several other shipping companies that operate in the US like DHL. Their presence may not be as big, but they can be competitive depending on what you're shipping.
 
It really depends on the driver. UPS drivers are UPS employees. FedEX are contractors. My brother works for a small FedEX contractor. I bought a video card from NewEgg and it was being delivered through them. The tracking showed it as "Delivered", but it didn't show up. We called NewEgg and FedEx. FedEX said they would look into it and get back to us, they said it was delivered and they couldn't do anything about it. So I called my brother and he said he knows the guy that runs our route. He looked into it and turns out the guy never delivered it and just marked it as "Delivered". The guy said he delivered it to the wrong address, but my brother thinks it was in his possession the whole time. It then showed up a couple days later at my front door.
 
pgwalsh said:
There are several other shipping companies that operate in the US like DHL. Their presence may not be as big, but they can be competitive depending on what you're shipping.
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Well DHL(which is the german post office essentially that isn't hampered by a stupid charter and congressional "oversight") pulled out of residential deliveries in the US not profitable enough. There are more companies that will deal with business not few that will do residential service.
 
Semantics said:
Other way around Fedex and UPS both use USPS as final delivery services for undesirable shipping items, it's also doesn't count because by charter USPS isn't allowed to compete.
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FedEx and ups move the usps boxes from dc to dc through their own systems. USPS can do final delivery for both but one of the biggest rfp's out there for ups and fedex is the usps biz. USPS simply can't compete with either in reality.


And for the Dhl peeps, they suck in the US.
 
I ship alot, but we are relatively small. We pay a shit ton more per package then Amazon or another mega shipper does. The bigger the discount they get, the more they have to charge everyone else...
 
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