In Defense of FedEx.....sort of

[Howard Clark]

I have to say that all the delivery personnel for Fed-Ex, UPS, and USPS that I deal with are fine folks. The DHL driver is afraid of the neighbors dog, but then so is almost everyone else that delvers anything there. (except the UPS driver, my friend Steve, who has a bag of doggie treats and knows how to ingratiate himself to ANY dog).

When it comes to issues of billing, customs, brokerage, and paper work in general, I am a USPS booster. We get a lot of bang for our buck.

Treat all the delivery people like humans, and you may discover that they ARE.

[turpin]

No matter what you may think of the organisation it's nice to know that their delivery guys can still have a human face!

They're just people. Corporate FEDEX is the monolitic money-grubbing entity

Well being the good UPS employee I am, I would have to disagree with that statement.

You know what that say: Go Brown and you'll never frown!

example: Fedex charges $25 formal entry fee if an item requires formal entry under the customs regs. I was told by Fedex Trade Networks that any woolen item ov value over $5 requires formal entry. So you culd buy $5 wool item, pay the vendor $8 for shipping, and Fedex would charge you $25 to process the entry (in theory - I can't think of a reason to send a $5 wool item via Fedex).

On the other hand I bought 75 yards of tartan, paid ~$300 in customs fees, and Brown only charged about $5 to process the entry.

[auld argonian]

I think that it just looks bad in this age of bar-coded-computer-generated documents for them to charge as if an actual human being (Bob Cratchit with an inkwell and a quill pen, perhaps?) has to fill out a form of some kind. A five dollar processing fee sounds about right.

Best

AA