The Fedex rant

Here’s a first. Yesterday I needed to pay a Fedex bill and had lost the original invoice. I had the second sheet with the backup detail but there was no mailing address on it. Their return envelope just has a clear window for the address to show through, and unlike most remittance envelopes it was not preprinted with the bar code for the ZIP code, so that was no help.

So I went on fedex.com and tried “contact us” and searched for “mailing address” and “pay bill by mail”. No luck. So I called the 800 number, pushed 0 for an operator, told her I’d lost the address and needed it to pay the bill. She says “I’ll get that for you” and puts me on hold—for 5 minutes! By now I’ve done a search on Google and found a mailing address so I hang up.

How many layers of incompetence are at work here? The invoice printing people, the envelope printing department, the web folks, the telephone staff… not one had seen fit to solve a problem that must come up many times each day. It’s their money, folks, I wanted to send it to them!

Ask your payables department about Fedex and they’ll probably have a story like this. Every customer does. Good thing they’re better at shipping packages than at managing their own customer accounts.

One thought on “The Fedex rant”

  1. As a follow-up, I got an email this morning which is just as unhelpful as the rest of my experience. This is in response to something I didn’t mention above: I have an Amex card that offers a rebate when used for Federal Express shipping, and so I wanted to charge my invoice to that, but could find no way to do so. I clicked the “contact us” link and sent a request for help. Here’s their reply:

    Thank you for your inquiry.

    I regret that we are unable to address your concern via this avenue.
    Please contact our Worldwide Revenue Operations representatives at
    1-800-622-1147.

    Thank you for your interest in FedEx.
    Brenda Stiltner

    On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:11:28 -0700 (PDT) you wrote:

    >(2007-08-10 14:11:28) otis@otismaxwell.com wrote:
    >
    >First Name : OTIS
    >LastName : MAXWELL
    >Phone Number : 4152559441
    >Email Address : otis@otismaxwell.com
    >
    >
    >Comments : Your home page says you can pay by credit card, and
    that’s what I
    >want to do with this invoice. Can I go to a local center and give
    them my
    >credit card since you will not accept it online?
    >ALSO: I am unable to pay by mail since i don’t have the original
    document and
    >when I ask your program to “reprint apyment summary form” I just
    get a blank
    >page.
    >

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