Hey! I am trying to be cool here! Lighten up!
I heard that on Barretta. It must be cool if Huggy Bear says it.
In the future, request that no packages be left without a signature. It doesn’t cost any extra but most Fed Ex and UPS machines I’ve seen have as their default to not require a signature, but the button is there.
You would have to request it everytime.
HOWEVER, I don’t know if you would need to send items to your address “c/o monstro” to the front desk to avoid a redelivery charge since you weren’t standing exactly in the line of sight of the delivery person. As you know that’s how they getcha.
Of course, I know that does you no good right now. 
You are my hero.
Or, you would be if it was still 1975.
Or, you would be if you’d gotten the t.v. show right- Huggy Bear was on Starsky and Hutch 
Oddly enough, I either saw Antonio Fargas at LAX last week, or his perfect twin. A much older and still very slender Vargas.
I’ve had a FedEx account for 21 years. They’ve lost one item and one veeeeeeeery pricey item was stolen by a FedEx employee from within the LAX FedEx Building. Pity, that. My insurance paid me the $ 12,500.00 for a replacement part and the employee was arrested. 
As a rule, they have done very well by me. I’ve shipped a few things Internationally but I have to admit, I’ve never had to pay that kind of surcharge. As I said, and as others have said, get your own FedEx account if you are going to do this a lot.
Cartooniverse
Paul you’ve been in this region long enough, you must know this is par for the course when it comes to couriers. I remember the problems we used to have with “FedEx” in Egypt (ie their local agent) - lies lies lies every week, in the end we had to get our supplier to send us stuff early in the vain hope it would arrive on time.
There is really nothing FedEx international can do, when it comes to 51% owned country branches, the situation is hopeless. And you know what this part of the world is like during Ramadan, honestly what did you expect?
I would be thankful that your package did arrive, intact, within two weeks. If it’s any more urgent than that, you need to take it yourself or get a friend to, or hire a professional personal air courier.
I don’t want to sound defeatist but after six years in the Gulf - locally-owned companies - Customs - the Post - bureaucracy and export “charges” (=bribes) and Ramadan - my god I’d call it a miracle that it arrived within eleven months.
FedEx is/are a bunch of crooks. Dispute the charges with the credit card company and don’t pay. Let them scramble around with Mastercard for the money for a while and see how cooperative they get then.
FedEx sucks like a strung-out crack whore.
You guys are talking about me , just to put a face (well, username) on Fedex.
Sorry I screwed up your delivery. It has been hectic lately, but I realize you don’t want excuses.
But wow, “freakin’ idiot”, “grab Fedex by the throat and strangle it”, “…is/are a bunch of crooks” and “sucks like a strung-out crack whore”?
Here comes my shame spiral…
Well, it’s very easy to throw stones. How many Dopers could drive 250-400 miles * day in and day out* while making sure that every delivery goes perfectly, and somehow making sure that everyone’s boxes get there first thing in the morning??
Ahh. Thought so. You’re paying for a highly organized, VERY well-run shipping service that works world-wide. As has been pointed out, once you leave the United States you are operating with that sexy purple and orange logo at the whim of the customs ( and, Customs ) and habits and work ethics of a local purveyor who for a fee is allowed to show himself/herself as a FedEx Shipping Station.
Have I been fucked by FedEx? Yeah. Has it been incredibly rare, considering the volume of shipments I get and send yearly? You betcha. Have the employees and phone contact folks consistently tried to work the system to re-direct, find a package or driver and generally make sure I am happy and things get done for me? Without doubt. They take pride in what they are doing and it makes a difference.
When will people realise that FedEx/USPS/Royal Mail etc etc etc have got you firmly by the gonads.
Once you’ve paid your postage fees delivery is in the lap of the gods.
The whole system sucks no matter what country or what carrier is used
I use DHL now that I’m back in the Middle East. So far so good. 
I am willing to cut them some slack. I am less willing when they charge me US$520.
Go back and read post #6. You got fucked by the mailbox place long before FedEx ever got their hands on your package.
Shipping via mailbox places is very very expensive, as you have found out.
Word.
FedEx has entered a refund in The System. Guy at MBE says it may take a month to get to him.
FedEx has always sucked for parcels and other non-document shipments.
15 years ago I worked at Bose. We shipped out a multi-media system to an out-of-town inside sales rep so he could do presentations with it. All the equipment was bolted into heavy duty flight cases. They were all marked as being heavy and fragile.
the recipient called to say that all the knobs had come off the components. We sent them a new shipment and got the old one back. They did a stress test on how much force it took to get the knobs off their posts, did a little math, and found that the case must have been dropped onto a hard surface from a height of at least 15 feet en route.
Assholes.
Do they have a number you can call from Saudi Arabia, at least?
My last job in the US included some stock and a 401K (let us not derail ourselves by the thought of “excuse me, why do I have to put money into retirement in the US when I actually plan to retire in Spain”, ok?).
Managed by a company that has all this info for international investors all over their webpage.
No email anywhere on said page.
The webforms only accepted US phone numbers, US zip codes and US adresses.
And the only phone they listed was an 800 number which did not accept calls from abroad. If you call other 800 numbers and they do accept the call, the phone company you’re using tells you “the number you’re calling will cover the local cost of the call, will you cover the international costs? Please answer yes or no” If you say no, it disconnects. In this case, I just couldn’t communicate with them until a friend in the US had called them and managed to extract a “real phone number”.
And of course, I had to call 9-5, CO time.
All of this is the idea that everyone is an American in America. My bank is asking me for my US address. (I don’t have one.) If I fill out their silly form with a silly answer I could imagine being hauled up in front of a court someday. (I have a good imagination.)
American companies off a coupon for a free printer with a new computer. You get the coupon, 'Valid only in the US."
I wrote to Black & Decker on their website to find out where to get a certain filter. They sent me a list of retailers in the US and Canada. America, nice country, just a little insular.
I feel you pain, lost my wallet in Doha. Had to call to cancel credit cards. Couldn’t reverse the calls, so had to pay LD charges from here.
Now,I’ve signed up for Skype and can call 800 numbers in the states at no cost. Works great. You need a broadband connection on your computer and a headphones and microphone.
I guess you didn’t get that email.
Skype is only free within the Continental United States and certain neighborhoods in Nova Scotia.
You will get little sympathy from me, I run in to the same thing and my country is bloody attached to the US.
Paul, I’d be happy to find and ship something for you if needed. B&D has a hq just up the road from me.
I ran into a website the other week that restricted address entries to US addresses and zip codes. I emailed the company, to find out that they do not deal outside the US. Okay, I can accept that, even though I am not pleased by it… but could they at least put a notice to that on the web pages, preferably somewhere obvious at the beginning of the data-entry process so us poor foreigners don’t enter a raft of useless data?
At least the customer service was reasonably quick and answered the actual question.