I’ve never been the sort of guy who thought he could buy himself a better game. From your bike example - I bought a new bike maybe 5 years ago. Shortly thereafter I started developing hip arthritis such that I have to work at getting my leg over the seat. If I had bought the bike today, I might have bought a little girl’s/step through bike.
Yeah, and so? FedEx treats the shipper- who pay the fees fairly well, They dont give a crap about the people to whom the stuff is delivered TO, sine they dont give FedEx any money. Not to mention, their delivery drivers arent employees, they are independent contractors.
There- 46,814 reviews.
Yes, you handled a company that ships OUT.
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/delivery/fedex-shipping.html
You have a point, but you may be making more of it that it warrants.
As the shipper, I want the package getting to the correct recipient undamaged and reasonably close to the promised delivery date / time. And I’d like 100% reliability, but of course have to settle for something less.
Anything less than the above from my courier company turns into a customer service problem for me. Not for e.g. FedEx.
Bingo. And I never let our Customer Service either blame FedEx nor tell our customers to call FedEx directly. We chose FedEx; our customers didn’t.
And one of the myriad things that I did, as part of my role, was to automate our database reports to tell me which packages did and did not meet the FedEx service commitment. I had very rich and granular data that I regularly shared with FedEx in a collaborative effort toward constant improvement. If the data reflected that we had particular issues at a particular station or hub, we’d conference call with that manager and EVP’s in Memphis, and we’d get stuff done.
Now, a small fraction of a large number is still a large number, but FedEx was – generally – shockingly good.
None of which feels good when it’s the thing that you ordered and where the delivery didn’t live up to the promise or your expectations.
Though I don’t know over what period of time those ‘reviews’ came in, I do know that FedEx ships about 5.8 BILLION packages each year.
Assuming, arguendo, that the ‘reviews’ all were made in a single year, they would represent app. 0.00080714% of all FedEx packages handled that year – generally, extremely upset customers.
TL;DR: I think you may also have a sample size issue, there.
We had the same problem in my biz.
On a slow day my employer alone moved 600,000 people a thousand miles on average. IOW six hundred million passenger-miles per day.
On busy days it was wacky how many and how far. The whole-industry numbers are simply mind boggling.
Joe or Jane only know their flight was late or misconnected or had a mechanical.
We knew we delivered 99.5% within our sevice commitment.
Statistics suck. But they beat anecdotes hands down.
Yeah, look, few people ever both to write and post reviews.
A decent national poll of us 300+ million of us is considered to be 1000-5000 replies.
So, no, I dont have a sample size issue.
Yes, you do.
And since those polls – done well – are generally randomized - even within certain cohorts - I’d argue that you have a selection bias, too:
Sample size is decent. Seection bias is the overriding problem in all reviews.
The vast majority of folks get good results and don’t post reviews. It’s all unrepresentative outliers all the time which make the noise we see.
Yes, a good sample size, but there is no way to get past selection bias on this.