Ok people. I want everyone on E4 to stop using fedex. For the LOVE OF GOD stop using this TRASH company. I want all sellers of pokemon card on ebay to stop using fedex. I wish it would happen. Random internet users stumbling upon this by accident? Don’t use fedex.
I have been forced to receive packages from this company far, far too many times in the last 5 years. I have way, way too much experience with them. And guess what? It’s always bad!
What I do for a living: I work camera department on tv and commercial productions. All the shows you watch, all the commercials you see, all the movies you screen, they all rely on productions shipping gear to and fro. Because you can’t ship thousands of pounds of gear through usps, it must be shipped privately. Fedex has a monopoly on this market. Literally no one in the industry uses UPS. They might as well not exist. (They’re trash too anyway, just not nearly as bad)
Just this week. Out of maybe about 100 productions I have worked on, this week is probably about the 50th (conservative guess, likely more) where fedex has lost half the production’s gear–it is usually delayed by a couple days in this scenario, which is just as bad for the production, no difference in outcome. This has significantly made my job harder as on this particular production I am in charge of the camera gear. I’ve had to go rent the stuff locally and do an inexplicable amount of extra tedium in getting non-package gear synced up and aligned with production’s gear that is spec’d out a certain way, uses very specific combos etc. Different brands, different things have to replace the necessary gear and they don’t match. It’s a F***** nightmare, an already stressful job made remarkably difficult and sleep draining etc. My prep day was supposed to be no more than 6 hours. It took 12 hours today. I received no extra pay after the 6th hour. Fedex cost me 6 hours on just this one occasion after many, many others in the past.
And fedex does this ROUTINELY.
Now, onto point 2/3. I have really invested into my business this year, and have bought a lot of gear myself. What do most sellers on B&H and ebay ship with? Fedex, of course. From delays to more delays, which only notify you mid day when you’ve already arranged to be home (if you’re even available) only to find out it’s gonna (maybe) be the next day, to laughable “delivery windows” of 8am to 12pm, ooooops, we mean 12pm to 4pm, haha, nope, now it’s 4pm to 9pm… and of course the occasional delivery of a signature required package left at my door for a 2k piece of equipment left out in the blistering heat and free to be stolen, done so when I’m not home, then of course when I am home they heed the obligation and attempt 3 times only to return to sender since I CANNOT HOLD AT LOCATION BECAUSE OF SHIPPERS REQUIREMENTS. WTF? Absolute insanity. Like unfathomable insanity.
Now example 3, and why I’m making this psa. Why the absolute insane hell would a pokemon seller on ebay use fedex for a card? USPS is 1/3th to even 1/5th the price, offers FAR more consistent timings on their estimates–I can’t even remember a single time in the past 2 years with 100x the amount of packages as fedex that they didn’t deliver on the 2 day time window they promised for priority mail–the list goes on. Most of the time any given recipient knows when their postal service comes, as they have established routes and you can rely on them coming around a certain time. They HOLD AT LOCATION when you aren’t home for a signature requirement, and guess what, naturally hold it for 14 days, not NONE if they attempted 3 times like fedex.
I’ve had way too many ignorant sellers on ebay use fedex and it’s been just as much a nightmare as it has been for my professional experience with fedex. This card in particular, they claim they attempted twice–only once did a notification say “out for delivery”–and will try one more time before returning to the bloody sender. I cannot, I repeat, I cannot even request to hold at the location right down the street so I can pick it up. The shipper’s requirements yet again preclude this option. Why on god’s earth this is even an option is as absurd as letting a blind and deaf man fly a commercial passenger aircraft with 300 passengers.
I’ve just hastily thrown this together so I can’t think of the innumerable additional examples and reasons you SHOULD NOT use fedex. Oh, like the dude on this forum who got 300k worth of cards stolen by fedex and then auctioned off by them. No, this isn’t embellished. Fedex sends a measly $100 check and then poof magically the cards show up on some ebay seller’s page within a year.
I beseech thee. Do not, just don’t. Use anything else. If you’re international, use your national post. If to the US, use national post and let it hand itself off to usps. If you live in a country where you claim it’s not feasible and fedex is your only option, I’m sorry, truly sorry. They don’t deserve the business, they are the worst business in existence. They are scum.
Don’t use fedex.
Insert shakespearean dramatic poem about why thy fedex is the dearth of all things good, all things competent, all things right with the world.
Have a good day. Don’t use fedex.
When you think it may be a good idea to use fedex, ducks fly together
and that’s why I wasn’t notified on anything. I guess somehow CGC screwed it up and also the last customer service agent didn’t actually verify my number. This new one was super kind. Fixed my number, put a note in, told me exactly how long I had before it would return to CGC. In the end I had to go to the distribution facility to pick it up, which is a good 40-60 minutes to get there and back. I actually did that phone review they ask you to do after the call and I said, with tears rolling down my face, that she was the most helpful Fedex employee I’ve ever spoken to and she immediately deserves a raise.
magically vanishing