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Man, am I p***ed off at Fedex (Federal Express) right now. Trying to ship my goods overseas, I decided to go with Fedex because the customer rep told me they could do door to door shipment within a week, no problem for quite a reasonable price.

Well, here’s what happened, see if you wouldn’t get enraged by such crappy and idiotic customer service:

- Called in Tuesday to confirm that I wanted to use their service.
- I specifically asked the rep if it’s ok to have the goods not at home, but at public storage, and the driver can ask front desk to call me to come over. She said ok, driver can do that and wait for me since I live so close.
- I asked if there’s a specific time we could arrange for pickup. She replied saying driver needs 2.5 hour window, so I need to be ready within that window of time.
- Agreed to pickup between 4.00 and 6.30 pm next day (Wednesday).
- Wednesday about 5.23 pm, get called from the public storage person, saying truck is entering gate. I rush to my car, get there at 5.30 (passing a Fedex truck at the nearest intersection to storage).
- The public storage person tells me, driver doesn’t want to wait, it’s a waste of time, can’t wait for customer even 1 minute.
- I curse Fedex and call them from my cell, got put on hold for 20 minutes. So I decide to leave a message and drive home.
- Get home, call again, talked to another customer rep. Blames the other rep, saying she shouldn’t have agreed to that. Says that I need to arrange for someone to always be there within 2.5 hours. (Geez… so customer has to suit Fedex and wait 2.5 hours, while they won’t even wait 1 minute for customer to arrive… sounds fair… great job whoever made this decision *sarcastic*). The rep doesn’t even bother to apologize for their mistake (the other rep agreed to this yesterday). I just hang up… too angry.
- My wife who’s a bit calmer decides to call and try arrange something. Finally agree to leave locker open with documentation so that driver just has to be let in and can pick up goods without anybody being there.
- Rep said I need to label boxes with destination address, number of boxes and fill in 1 airway bill for pickup.
- Thursday morning, I call to Fedex to confirm a few fields in the airway bill, and was told my rep that I also needed the Export Form (B13) and Proforma Invoice. (argh.. why couldn’t the rep last night tell me so I could do it earlier)
- Call in again to confirm something within the B13; this time another rep says… no I don’t need a B13 for personal items. (Can’t you guys get along on procedure?)

*** Note: *** Everytime I call in to Fedex (about 4 – 5 times up till now), they ask me what’s in the shipment. I keep telling them it’s personal items, clothing, books, photo albums etc. Each time, they say OK, no problem. You’ll see how this becomes a problem later on.

- So Thursday comes along, no problems it seems, shipment gets picked up by Fedex driver, noting that I might be missing some documentation, but that can be sent later on.
- Thursday afternoon, got a message from Fedex, saying there’s problems with shipment. I need to itemize every single item in the 5 boxes, including materials, country of origin etc. (Oh my God… hundreds pieces of clothing, books and photo albums, and I need to do this – yes, customs requirements, but would be nice to know earlier before boxes were packed….), and that Fedex cannot arrange customs brokerage in Indonesia, ie. I have to find my own.
- I call the rep, saying why the hell didn’t you tell me this beforehand? After calling Fedex so many times, confirming that it’s personal goods, nobody said anything then, so why now when everything’s on the go? What kinda bullshit customer service operation are these guys running? So unprofessional and unfriendly customer service.
- I ask for a discount because of the inconvenience caused, rep says can only give additional $100 max. Ok, so I have to sacrifice 2 working days (approx. 15 hours x my average hourly rate if working $30 = $450), get told lies and more lies about how easy this would be, get angry at Fedex’s idiotic customer service promises, and you only give me another $100 discount????

That’s the story so far. I’ll have to try to get a customs broker in Indonesia just because I have to use Fedex at the moment (well, my goods are at their place, and I’m not gonna go through the hassle of them returning my goods to public storage), but holy crap…. can you believe these large corporations trying to trick customers into buying their service, only to be told later on that there are lots of catches behind their good price and promise?

Update:
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they just made me even madder *sigh*. We decided to forget shipping with Fedex because of all the trouble they’ve caused us and request our goods back. Here’s how it went:
- Call in Fedex to ask goods to be shipped back to house address (different than public storage… not gonna wait there for 2.5 hours for delivery truck to arrive. Enough of that the last few days.
- Agent says someone will call back.
- Rep calls, asking if we want goods to be returned to sender? I say yes. She says, will this be charged to the account. *Me rather stunned*.

I’m completely baffled. Are we living in looney world or something? They make all the mistakes, misinforming me and deceiving me saying no problem will occur, that they’ll handle everything etc, after putting me through hell just to get my goods picked up, making non-coordinated errors everywhere, and I GET CHARGED TO GET MY GOODS BACK????????? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE FEDEX?

Words just escape me at the moment, I’m too enraged by this sheer lunacy of how Fedex. They have no coordination between representatives, mis-inform customers on procedure, documentation and ease of shipment, have no respect for customer time, expect customer to meet their deadlines, and expect the customer to pay for their mistakes. I must be having a nightmare or something. Quick, somebody wake me up before it gets even worse.

Stupid Fedex, crappy service, bad customer service attitude, I just hope one day all small customers like me band together and boycott you guys, to teach you a lesson in customer centric service and satisfaction.

AAaaaaaaAAAGggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!#%#@!$&@#%&*@$#%*@$*$%$*%
Sooooooo mad right now.

Tags: Fedex, Federal Express, Bad Customer Service

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