Someone sent me a package last Friday using the FedEx overnight delivery option, meaning the package was supposed to arrive before noon on Saturday. Saturday came and went, and so did Sunday: no package or any FedEx delivery person came. There was no update of any kind in the online tracking system either. Monday afternoon, I had the sender’s secretary call FedEx to find out where the package was. FedEx told her that the reason for the delay was “a shortage in staff these weeks” in my area. They promised the delivery would happen on Tuesday.

The package did come on Tuesday, though the late delivery changed a lot of my plans. Even though I did not pay for the shipping, both the sender and the receiver were hurt by this situation. The late arrival of the package and the reaction of FedEx caused me to think about the obligations of shipping companies in such situations.

Obligations of a shipping company during shipping delays

For me, keeping both me and the sender in the dark about the reason for the delay is something that should not happen. As a customer, you are assumed to have an obligation to make a payment before the shipping company will take your package. The shipping company itself, however, does not feel obligated to some things it should do for customers or the package. Behold below the 4 obligations that I think shipping companies like FedEx should feel responsible for, when it comes to delayed deliveries:

1. Notify the sender after they make a payment

   Did you notify either the sender or the receiver about the reason for the delay after the sender pays for the shipment? Simply saying “On route for delivery” for 2 days in a row through the online tracking system tells me nothing. I know it is on route for delivery: that is why I am paying to have the item shipped. What I want to know is what kind of a route is causing the delivery of the package to be delayed, and I want you to tell me immediately, automatically, when any delay happens.

2. Notify the sender before they make the payment

   Did you notify the sender of any possible delays in the shipment of an item before they paid? If the shortage in staff has been going on for “weeks“, as FedEx told the sender’s secretary, would it not have been responsible for FedEx to tell the sender, before they placed the shipping order. The shipping company can say something like “You are sending this item overnight, but we have to tell you that because of the shortage of staff in the area where this package is going, we may not be able to deliver this item faster than the regular post office.”?

3. Refund the wasted money

   Did the shipping company reimburse the sender for the money they paid for an overnight delivery that took 4 days to deliver in reality? Sure, telling the sender that no overnight delivery is 100% confirmed is a good protection idea, but if you know you are not going to have enough staff to deliver items beforehand, how about reimbursing the sender some of the money they could have saved by shipping using a slower shipping method? The sender paid for overnight delivery, and the package got delivered after 4 days. The sender paid money for a service they did not get because the shipping company hid the fact that there could be delays due to staff shortage.

4. Apologize voluntarily and sincerely

   Imagine someone takes your money in order to do something for you, but the thing they actually do is not worth the money you gave to that person. That someone never apologizes to you until you inquire about the situation, to which they say “Oh yeah, the people I knew could not be found, thus the result was not what you expected. You should have expected it since anything can happen. Sorry”

   Would you consider such a reply to be an apology? If you do not think it is sincere or even an apology, why would you accept a similar apology from a shipping company? How many of us are not robots who would love to hear a sincere apology without us asking for it? An apology is not needed because of wanting emotional attention. An apology because you hid information from me so that you could wast my money, time and plans for your own gain. Very few businesses realize that: that is why most businesses simply keep saying sorry without feeling guilty or even knowing how the customer was affected.

Shortage in staff does not always have to amount to the suffering of the customer

The above points are what a shipping company should keep in mind. Simply being short on staff, which can either be signs of an innocent struggle or bad management, does not mean the only one suffering is the customer. In the above case, FedEx got all the money knowing full hand there would be delays, delivered the item late, and did not notify either the sender or the receiver about the reason for the late delivery. In the end, the winner was FedEx which got more money than what it actually provided in return to the sender and the receiver. In the end, the people who suffered were the direct and indirect customers: the sender who paid for the overnight shipping and the receiver who received the item late.

What do you think?

What do you think? As a customer, do you think a shipping company can do anything differently than what FedEx did above? If you owned or worked for a shipping company, what would you have done in a similar position? Would you have acted the same, or differently?

Oh, before I forget, I went to a FedEx Kinko’s store on Thursday to send a package overnight, and saw around 12 staff workers. 7 were working, while 5 were laughing and talking to each other in different areas. Maybe those 5 should be turned into drivers who can deliver packages in case of “shortage in staff.” The package did get delivered by Friday noon, which was good.

Thank you for reading.