Of all the shippers, I've found Fedex to be the most unreliable. UPS deliveries via Amazon seem to always arrive without issue but almost every Fedex package gets lost en route or is delayed.
Always felt like Amazon should drop Fedex.
Always felt like Amazon should drop Fedex.
Some people love the carrier you hate, and others hate the carrier you love.
This seems to have worked pretty well for folks who have a strong opinion, and avoids the need make lots of guesses about what people like.
Generally speaking, the biggest shipping preference people have is 'Free'.
So I wouldn't choose Fedex for anything valuable.
If you don't get what you buy, it's absolutely on the seller to make it right. It's on them to get reimbursed by the shipper for a failed delivery.
The other thing is that you're assuming there was no insurance. Maybe you're right but I doubt it, it was probably insured by Fedex and the uselessness of the insurance was included in "Fedex wouldn't do anything about it".
The "requesting a signature" part is something they often neglect to do, or do carelessly.
At any rate if the person making the trombone case can't be bothered to ship it properly, it's still Fedex's fault from the musician brother's perspective, because he knew firsthand that the driver failed to deliver the item directly to him.
It's not really a great solution.
I've had decent experience with FedEx myself, mostly in Canada but also some other places.
They've also delivered my packages to both of my neighbors on multiple occasions. Thankfully my neighbors were nice enough to correct the mistake rather than just keeping the items.
I've never had an issue with FedEx.
Someone stayed home from Tuesday evening onward, and they didn't manage to come and get it until Friday, despite calling them every morning asking what was going on
The person who eventually collected suggested our bell was broken and generously offered to test it for us - we had food delivered on Thursday evening so knew it was fine
And then before that there was the time I paid for 'guaranteed next-day delivery' on an envelope containing incredibly important documents which was only going to an adjacent zip code. Sent on Thursday and didn't show up until the week after, while UPS pretty much shrugged the whole weekend and said 'maybe we lost it?'
The worst, by far, is Amazon's own delivery service. Often late, frequently damaged, and inconsistent on when they show up during the day, if they can get into the building, and where they leave packages.
Have you ever had to deal with lost packages? Good luck trying to make any progress with USPS. I've had several packages lost by USPS. Every phone call I've made to them results in conflicting answers and bad information.
However, I live in Seattle and Amazon's own delivery service is arguably even worse than USPS. They might not lose packages (they now take photographs upon delivery), but the workers aren't very well trained. I've had packages left out by my sidewalk garage or left out on an unsheltered table in my front patio area. A number of times the packages have been rained on. It's a general level of cluelessness that you don't see with UPS, FedEx or USPS.
Oh, how about the time the newbie driver delivered the package to the wrong house? Have you ever tried to get through to a real person at UPS? Careful what you wish for. The only human UPS will willingly let you talk to is in some overseas call center — and they will have zero power to do anything and thus say whatever they need to in order to get you to hang up the phone. After managing to escalate that incident, the supervisor at UPS's San Francisco depot called me back and explained that the package had been delivered correctly. I realize I'm not the customer in this case, but, man UPS has done a good job of ensuring I choose any other carrier.
FedEx... bless them. Aside from offering up gun fetishist discounts (yuck) and being hardcore anti-union zealots, FedEx accepted a package from a vendor with two different delivery addresses on it. Yes, the vendor fucked up. But FedEx accepted the package and got it to the regional sorting center and just sat on it because they didn't know what to do. Zero effort made over a few days to call the vendor, myself, or the other person whose contact info was also on the package.
OnTrac though, every single time they tried to use OnTrac, OnTrac messed it up. Always multiple days late, and always a challenge to track it down and get it. Haven't had them in quite a while though, so maybe they got fired already.
very positive: a laptop from Lenovo from China + replacement keyboard from US + CD from Japan (because of some VAT-war I cannot buy anymore mp3s from amazon.com) during the last 6 months have all been delivered extremely fast and in perfect conditions.
I love FedEx' feature to be able to tell them in advance not to deliver the package at home (I work so I'm never around when they would come by) but at some shops nearby my home or nearby where I work or to just hold it back. The last time I used UPS it did not have these features (might have improved now).