FedEx Ground Purgatory...

 

So a couple weeks ago, I found a floor torchiere just like the one my mother had in Shaker.  I have been looking for one for years. 

Unlike most floor lights, this torchiere directs 100% of its light output directly up and is styled in the Hollywood Regency style.  I never took Mom's when she was combining houses with my stepfather because it didn't go with the arts and crafts thing that we favored at the time.  But once we moved to the big house in Cedarcroft, I wanted one. 

Well, I found one and after weighing the expense of buying it, I bought it. 

And that is where my hate-hate relationship with FedEx Ground began. 

The seller shipped it from the upper Midwest via FedEx Ground. That should have taken four business days.  Should have. 

Everything was swell from the seller to Minneapolis, to South Bend, to Toledo, according to tracking, and then I started getting delivery notifications, via email, that the package would arrive that day, even though it never got to a regional sort facility in greater Cleveland.  "Expect your package today from 10AM to 3PM today" the messages promised.  So I waited.  And waited. and it never came. 

Then the next day, FedEx got it to another regional Ohio facility, and again, another promise of a delivery, and nothing. 

THEN Last Thursday it arrived in Twinsburg, Ohio, in the wee hours of the morning, and then more options appeared in grey, including received at the facility, transferred to delivery truck, and out for delivery.  But the only one in black said that the trailer had been delivered to Twinsburg, which I found odd. 

So I called FedEx Customer support. 

Now the FedEx I remember was the one that had its call center in Memphis.  But when I heard the made say that his *name* was "Baub" I knew it was a script-reading employee overseas.  And this is where things got interesting. 

"Oh, yes Mr. Cookie sir, I can assure you that package is available for pick up."  Never mind the system said not available, *Baub* assured me that he had sent a message to have the box pulled and held for me in the pick-up facility.   That was around 8am, and I set out for Twinsburg, which is about an hour away in snow and ice. 

When I get there, and I call the number indicated, an older woman answers and castigates me for coming to pick it up.  When I said what I had been told by *Baub*, her words were "You cannot believe anything they say." So I was told to wait a couple minutes and she would locate the package.  After forty minutes I called back to ask "What the hey?" and was connected to another woman who said "I'm sorry, but we are backed up and I cannot tell what truck it's on.  So I drove home. 

So for the rest of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the box with my lamp sits in the truck. 

On Monday it was received and set onto a truck for delivery. Yay, right? 

Wrong. It was never delivered. 

Tuesday, it went onto another truck and, well, again, it wasn't delivered. 

Wednesday morning?  It was in the warehouse, and my contact in the warehouse said she told them to hold it, but it was loaded onto another tractor-trailer and moved outside to a location. 

So they got it there, checked it in, failed to deliver twice, and then tossed it into the trailer, AGAIN, and parked that out in the lot. 

Come to find out that at least three other people I know, including a cousin, have had packages stuck in Twinsburg for longer than three weeks. 

By this time, the person I was working with was frustrated, I was frustrated, and then I got a call from FedEx Corporate.  The caller was in the U.S., she apologized, listened to the whole run-in, and said "Multiple lines of management are aware" that the box is to be located and sent to the cage for pickup.  

But what they were really onto was *Baub* telling me to drive out in inclement weather to pick the box up.  Evidently, that's a HUGE no-no. 

I thanked the troubleshooter for listening, gave my compliments to the employee at the center who was trying to get this ironed out, and even said that they needed more of her and less *Baub". 

But here I am, in FedEx Purgatory, going into their busiest week of the year.  And every time they pick it up and send it somewhere, the chances of this lamp not being damage-free grow exponentially. 

And now this is going into its fourth week.   I am not alone. Evidently, this is impacting a very large chunk of North East Ohio. 

So now, along with a couple thousand other people, we sit and we wait.