You’re a Mean One, Mr. FedEx

I’ll preface this blog by stating right up front: My family had a good Christmas. I’m very fortunate and grateful that we didn’t want for anything over the holidays, and the kids were loaded down with great gifts and I got a bunch of unexpectedly cool presents myself. We feasted and played and watched White Christmas. None of us actually need another thing.

That said, there are a bunch of Christmas presents for my children that never made it here. It’s left some of us scratching our heads.

Anyone who knows my mother knows that she’s into Christmas the way mice are into cheese, squirrels into nuts, and monkeys into flinging poo. She absolutely loves the holiday and begins thinking about it on December 26th of the previous year—when she will hit the after-Christmas sales at every major retailer and buy things dirt cheap. Ann Chambers will collect gifts and plan from January through December in order to get gifts for family and friends. The fact that her son (that’s me!) and his family live 800+ miles away is only one more logistical detail in the year-long Christmas stratagem.

One thing that’s happened in recent years is my Mom’s version of the 12 Days of Christmas for her grandchildren. Each kid gets gifts that start small and get increasingly impressive up until Christmas itself. It’s a tradition that the Chambers children have given their unanimous approval. (In other words, for a dozen days before Christmas each day begins with, “Can I open my present now?”) It’s a hit around these parts.

The 12 Days of Christmas, 2008 Edition began with a 24 x 24 x 24 inch box shipped in mid-November using FedEx Ground service. It was filled with a bunch of stuff—from gift cards to clothes to toys. With plenty of time to spare, it seemed that the plans were going well.

Because of a miscommunication, Mom thought that I had already received the first box, and it was sitting here in my office. Turned out that wasn’t true, but we figured it after the first week of December that the package never got to us. She pulled out the tracking number and had FedEx put a trace out on the package. It showed the package as scanned in and received for shipment in Kennesaw, Georgia … and never going anywhere after that. After a search, FedEx declared the package lost.

The best plans never survive contact with the enemy, and General Ann knows this. She had the package fully insured, and she immediately rushed around and replaced the gifts and got them out quickly, again via FedEx Ground.

The Good News? The second box arrived safely and successfully. The Bad News? That was the final bit of good news in this tale.

The remainder of this year’s 12 Days of Christmas, along with some additional gifts for friends who needed a bit of help this year, were sent in two 24 x 24 x 24 inch boxes. As a backup plan, she used a Sharpie and wrote my name, address, and phone number by hand on the box just in case the label got peeled off or damaged. She sent both boxes via FedEx with delivery expected on December 19th.

The Friday went to Monday the 22nd, and when trying to track the package down the snowstorms in the Midwest were blamed. She was told I could possibly drive out to a shipping hub in Carey, Illinois to pick up the boxes if the drivers could not get out the door. When Mom called back to confirm the boxes would indeed be there for me to get them, she was then told that one box was actually in Chicago and another was in Tennessee.

So here we are on Friday the 26th, the day after Christmas. Poor frazzled Mom, who planned for this all year, was on the phone with FedEx to confirm that our packages would be delivered today … a full week late. After being told previously they were in various places all over the country, someone confessed.

FedEx has no idea where the boxes are.

In less than an eight week period, FedEx was unable to successfully get three out of four huge boxes from Point A to Point B. They have vanished mysteriously within their shipping system, and their employees are apparently accustomed to lying in order to shut customers up and get them off the phone.

Anyone who knows my mother, though, knows that there’s perhaps one thing more she loves as much as Christmas: resolution, satisfaction, payback, or a good ol’ fashioned ass-ripping. She has already worked her way up the FedEx corporate foodchain and she’s expecting explanation, answers, and a rush on processing her insurance claim since the expectation is that none of these packages will ever be found.

So what’s the problem? A large, complicated shipping system in which some packages inevitably fall through the cracks? Disorganized drivers who mark things into their system even when they aren’t quite sure what they actually did? Or is it simple employee theft?

Who knows? But five minutes of Google told me this isn’t exactly an isolated incident.

We have to ship stuff, folks. Sometimes it’s going to get lost. I recommend insuring the crap out of it and keeping all of your receipts and documentation related to what you ship. Consider using the USPS Postal Service, because its theft would be a federal crime. (And there are ways to insure mailed packages as well.)

FedEx currently has a 25% success rate with the Chambers family for the holidays. That’s an F – – – for those applying high school grading standards. It sucks, it’s unacceptable, and I’m pretty sure none of us are going to be using them again unless we’re given a really compelling reason.

Hope everyone had a great holiday. We didn’t let Lost Package Blues spoil the Chambers Christmas. I just feel bad for Mom, who works so hard at getting her grandkids the 12 Days of Christmas, only to have boxes fall off the back of the truck.