I can't get on the other board so here is my 20 mills.

Around here the nicely uniformed, personable FedEx Express-Overnight drivers are different from the underpaid, scraggly employees of contractors that deliver the FedEx Ground packages. I know of one "contractor" in another state who bought in so that he could get his lazy sons out of the house.

I have gone weeks with a new driver every day. I have left for home at 5:00 with a contractor and a bunch of his buddies working on a delivery van full of packages in my parking lot drinking beer. I have spent many hours trying to help them get their vehicles started. And many times I have helped a driver
transfer packages from a broken down truck to another truck to be delivered.

I have had some of these drivers pull some very elaborate schemes to steal stuff. One particularly creative driver ripped off two 20 HP Onans. Never received a cent.

Their billing on the ground side is atrocious. It may take several bills before they ever finish billing you for a particular package. You may get a base charge, pay it. Then they in effect say, oops we forgot this fee, you pay it. Then they come back and tell you that it was a residential, not
commercial address. Then they may come back and bill you for some surcharge.

UPS gets all this on the original bill. They have been totally accurate in their billing, so far. They are always on time, well uniformed, in vehicles that run. They do have an attitude sometimes that is hard to take. But I have had no problem that couldn't be fixed in all they years we have used them.

They aren't real willing to pay off on claims. But if you are persistent and find the right people to talk to they have paid off on every claim so far. Plus the Worldship software works perfectly with
all my other software.

This is my experience. I am sure the quality differs greatly by contractor and area.

Dave,

Thank you sincerely for that information. That's a big help. UPS has been breaking a lot of stuff lately, that's why I've been considering an alternative.

You'll love this one. A customer returned a $2,000 package to us a couple of weeks ago. The contents of the package has been lost. The UPS label was attached to a different box... The contents of the second box? A big box of cheap bath towels.

Next month's special - buy a case of Releasit and get a free bath towel.






Rick Gelinas
encapman

Sorry to hear of your woes. We use tape galore. If one roll is enough, two rolls is better. We put a label in the box and two taped to the outside. I also provide the drivers with motivational stickers to help them deliver the package in good shape and right side up.

Here is a picture taken by the wife of a man who I shipped a motor by FedEx Ground.



The driver dropped it off the truck. The customer refused it. The driver posed it for a picture. Using paper and contents from ??????

The driver reasoned that since it was insured there certainly couldn't be a problem if he just took the motor. The husband of the consignee agreed to the scam if he could have the muffler. If not for the wife that would have been engine three stolen by a FedEx Ground "contractor" driver because the contractor went back and doctored things and said he never had the package.