Poor Customer Service At FedEx

I had an unfortunate episode of dreadful customer service with FedEx yesterday.

Being a marketing student from way back, I admire companies and businesses that get this right. It's so awesome to watch a good salesperson in action, or see someone deliver superior customer service after the sale.

In my case, it could have been the latter, but it wasn't.

Being a quant investment manager, I buy data. My supplier is S&P. Each week they send a data disc full of equity-related data. It is currently delivered via FedEx.

The FedEx label clearly identifies that the contents of the envelope is a DVD.

Yesterday, the FedEx guy left the envelope laying on the porch in front of my door. I've spoken with whomever the guy has been, in the past, about this. If anyone steps on the envelope, I could be out of luck for a week, as a replacement disc is shipped.

So I called FedEx to request a note be sent to the delivery guy. It wasn't super easy to find a phone number, because there's none on the mailing label or envelope.

When I got to a human, and explained my issue, her response was, to closely paraphrase,

'I can send a note to them, but it's all I can do. Don't know if it will matter.'

Gee, thanks.

I specified, as before in my conversations with prior delivery men, to wedge the envelope behind my mailbox.

To this, the customer service rep replied,

'He can't do that, because the mailman will think it's outgoing mail and take it.'

Wrong, sister. I carefully, but rapidly, explained that the area behind the box is neither in the mailbox, nor USPS property. And what mailman would try to take and deliver a FedEx envelope in the first place?

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Not to mention that she annoyed and disappointed me by not simply saying, while composing the note,

'Thanks for contacting us about this. I'll make sure he gets the note. Call me again if this hasn't solved your problem.'

See how effortless that would have been? She would have appeared to care about my problem and its solution. And even shared my hope and belief that the note would work, instead of essentially warning me it probably was a hopeless task.

Talk about lousy customer service and training.

FedEx need to do much, much better.