Before I begin, please note comments search is up and running.
Anyway, I’d like to tell you a personal anecdote that illustrates how brainless some corporate folks can be. My wife was in the process of setting up another office for her business, so she ordered some items of furniture. She accidentally entered one digit of the address wrong, but she quickly corrected her error, and that correction was transmitted to the seller who, in turn, told the shipper (FedEx) to correct the address label.
We kept expecting the furniture to show up, but we kept getting reporters that the delivery attempt failed. Last week, on Friday, we decided to basically park ourselves in front of her office, like cops on a stakeout, and wait for the FedEx truck to show, which it tended to do at about 9:30 in the morning. We waited a long while, but it never showed, and ten minutes after we left, they sent us another Could Not Deliver notice.
On Monday, we decided to stake out the area again, since we were at risk of all the products being shipped back due to so many failed attempts (apparently FedEx kept trying to deliver to the incorrect address, which is a place that simply does not exist). So I got there very early, at 8 a.m., and we waited a full two hours. I had to get back to my work, so I went ahead and walked home and left her there waiting.
She texted me to tell me that she just got a notice that all of the packages were delivered. That was puzzling, since she was right in front of her office, and no FedEx truck had appeared, and no packages had been delivered. Even though I know from hard experience that calling FedEx was a form of phone tree hell, I decided to do so anyway, to try to find out what was going on.
Once I finally reached a human being, I explained the situation to the man and gave him the various tracking numbers. He confirmed they were delivered, and he asked me to cite the address of the delivery. I read him the address of the office, and the conversation then took a strange turn which went something like this:
FedEx: The address you read isn’t where it was delivered.
Me: So was it delivered to 487 Hamilton instead of 467 Hamilton?
FedEx: I can’t tell you.
Me: Well, where was it delivered?
FedEx: I can’t tell you. Policy forbids it. I can’t tell you where your packages are.
Me: So let me get this straight: our packages arrived to a different address, but you can’t reveal to me the address?
FedEx: That’s right. Someone will be in touch with you about this in 48 business hours.
Me: {pause} “Business hours?” What’s that? Is that like Earth hours?
FedEx: A professional investigator will be back to you within 48 business hours.
Me: OK, look. Just hang on a second. Let me ask you this. Let’s play a game. Let me read to you different addresses. If I name the right address, will you tell me if it matches? You don’t have to say the address. I’ll say it.
FedEx: Yes, I am willing to do that.
Me: You’re serious? OK, OK, let’s go. {At this point, I recite my home address, a mail box address, and several other guesses, and then, just on a total random whim, I uttered the address of my wife’s other office, which was never mentioned at any point in the entire process of ordering these products.}.
FedEx: Yeah, that’s it. That’s the one. They all went there.
Me: W.T.F.??????
So it seems that, hard as it is to believe, someone at FedEx took the time and trouble to Google my wife’s business and find out a DIFFERENT address and changed all the addresses to go to that place. And, upon driving there, we find all the (very heavy) boxes stacked up near the entrance. Thus, I ported these damned things from our neighboring town back to Palo Alto.
I just think it was absolutely comic that like the ancient tale of Rumpelstiltskin, I had to guess where FedEx shipped all our stuff, and luckily, I managed to offer a loony guess which turned out to be right.
