So I ordered something online on Wednesday night, deciding on FedEx 2-day delivery as an option. The delivery estimate came up as Monday. Okay, I thought, maybe because of the whole Sunday thing, it would take a little longer to get here. It was picked up by FedEx Thursday night, got to the biggest local FedEx station Friday night, and got to the closest local facility this morning. So far, so good.
The tracking info says, on its arrival at the local facility, that “Package not due for delivery.” What in bloody hell does this mean? That they COULD have delivered it to me today, but are deliberately holding it so it gets to me on their estimate, and not before? Because that’s what that message seems to say to me. Have they dropped delivering on Saturdays (I admit I haven’t used them in ages)?
I’m gonna be REALLY annoyed if they could’ve gotten it to me today, but withheld it two extra days on purpose.
Could it be that they have limited room for packages, so the ones due for delivery are top priority and they budget space for those? Packages not yet due are left off due to space limitations?
You paid for, and got, 2 *business *day delivery. Weekends don’t count.
Monday is the 2nd business day after Thu, and Monday is when they will put it on their truck & take it to your house. That it got to their local station before Mon AM in the wee hours is nice for them, but no concern of yours.
You could have paid for, and gotten, delivery on Fri before 10AM. Or delivery on Sat AM, or any of the other 10-ish different options FedEx offers.
I’m not sure how it’s thumbing its nose at you to do exactly what they promised and what you paid for. As far as I can tell from the OP, it was delivered on the specified date. Why wasn’t it delivered early? Who knows. They don’t owe an explanation if they did exactly as the were asked to do.
Yes. They could have gotten it to you today. They won’t deliver it to you today because they are engaging in price discrimination. Premium pricing (next-day delivery versus two-day delivery) allows FedEx to determine who is willing to pay more and to capture that segment effectively. Here’s a hint: it does not magically take less time for the next-day merchandise coming out of the warehouse and going to your metro area than it does for two-day. They deliberately hold the two-day back so that they can offer a premium product. If you are more sensitive to price than speed, you’ll choose, as you did choose, two-day air. But if it really offends you to wait, and it offends you to at least the tune of the next-day-two-day price difference, then you should have selected next-day delivery.
It would be fair to add “and be sure that delivery resources are sufficient to reliably accomplish that premium level of service for those who selected and paid for it.”
Not really. FedEx does not charge the higher price to ensure the availability of resources, as you seem to think. Perhaps you mistake the phrase “price discrimination” as an accusation that they are doing something diabolical, like “invidious discrimination.” It is not, it just happens that economists use a term that is highly charged in other contexts.
The facilities that allow two-day delivery also allow next-day delivery. FedEx has the pricing structure that they have in order to get consumers to reveal their willingness to pay and to charge them accordingly. It does not really have anything to do with additional factor payments.
Just a tip to anyone who finds Kimmy Gibbler’s accurate description confusing enough, both UPS and FedEx standard ground delivery services are essentially day-definite as well. If you ship something via standard ground from central Connecticut to central Pennsylvania it will take 1 day to get there every single time, more or less. If you ship ground from Connecticut to western Illinois it will take two days every time. So depending on where you are ordering from and where you live, the express service can actually take longer or exactly the same length of time while costing tremendously more money. You can check your own ground delivery time map by zip code here: http://www.fedex.com/grd/maps/ShowMapEntry.do
Well, it certainly does cost something to offer Saturday deliveries - and that cost is clearly paid by those requesting this premium service. So in fact the extra cost is ensuring the availability of resources.
But my point is that if FedEx delivers on Saturday the package promised for Monday, they do two things that are strongly against their best interests:
They make customers believe it may not be necessary to pay a premium for premium service.
They increase the chance that packages for which the premium has been paid will not arrive on time.
I don’t know FedEx’s business model specifically, but the USPS will not hold things back specifically for purpose of price discrimination. If there’s still room on the truck (or plane, or ship, or whatever), and they’ve loaded all of the high-priority mail, they’ll deliver some low-priority mail quickly, too. I’ve seen packages mailed at the lowest price arrive the literal next day after they were mailed. They just won’t guarantee that kind of service for the cheap price. So if they do have a lot of high-priority packages going out that day, they’ll hold back on the low-priority ones, and you don’t have any reason to complain about it.
Unfortunately, the site I ordered from did not have any of those options available to me; as far as I can remember, the next fastest was overnight. No straight two day.
But thanks for the explanations. I knew it’d be dicey as soon as I saw that a weekend would be involved. Ah, well, at least it’s gonna be tomorrow… hopefully.
As for UPS they only deliver overnight packages on Saturday’s. I found this out last Friday from my Mom.
She has MS and gets her weekly shot via UPS and my dad sticks her. Shipped overnight on Thursday, should have been there Friday. UPS couldn’t find the house, they’ve found it several times a week for at least 10 years but apparently last week the street moved or something.
Anyways, Mom ended up in a conference call with the UPS yokel, and the lady from the pharmacy 1200 miles away. It was calmly explained that the shot was $2200 and insured and was no good if it didn’t hit a refrigerator in 48 hours, just deliver it on Saturday morning, no problem. They were informed that the OVERNIGHT package that wasn’t delivered Friday could not possibly be delivered Saturday since they ONLY deliver OVERNIGHT packages on Saturday. :rolleyes:
I’m pretty sure they are running a small # of drivers and warehouse folks on Saturday(most likely on OT), so if you’re not paying for Saturday delivery, you’re not getting it Saturday.
Also, FedEx doesn’t necessarily know whether the package is being delivered to a home (so you’d be home on a Saturday) or a business (which might be closed on a Saturday). So as far as they are concerned, if the shipper didn’t request Saturday delivery (and I know you weren’t given that option, but FedEx probably doesn’t know that), it’s a safer bet for them to wait until Monday, when you will presumably be available to receive your package at he address you gave.
They don’t hold a package if it’s there because you didn’t pay for the better service. They hold a package because the truck route is full for that day and it doesn’t have to be delivered that day. Also when you have morning delivery service they deliver those ahead of the regular route next day. It’s not all about truck capacity, it’s also about delivery time for all the load. The longer time delivery priority just gives them more options on delivery efficiency for the delivery route and you pay less for not requiring that higher priority.
Fed-Ex does this to me all the time. I’ve seen them hold a package for as long as 4days when I select standard Ground delivery…and they ALWAYS hold them so that the delivery is exactly 5 business days from the ship date.
On the other hand, I get about a dozen UPS Ground packages a week from a supplier 1 state away and we get those the next day 99% of the time.
Fed-Ex didn’t have many customers near work, so the deliveries could take a bit of time while they hoped to get more deliveries in the area. Often the delivery was on the last day possible and they hadn’t received any more freight for the area. The packages came by the delivery date, but hardly ever before. The driver was friendly and told us why the packages always took so long.
