My new project: Tact, a simple chat app.

FedEx: "We'll be back"

February 12, 2007

This post by Alec reminds me of a recent encounter I had with FedEx. I was supposed to get some package shipped to some address, but I wasn’t fully sure when the guys would arrive. And their Internet tracking is very nice, but it wasn’t fully obvious when the courier would arrive, so I just left it at that.

So one day there was indeed a slip in the mailbox “we were here but you weren’t around, so we’ll be back tomorrow before 5 PM”. Uhhh… that’s not very convenient if you need to be at work. If I was working somewhere where there was strict office hours checking and you couldn’t work remotely, I would have been in trouble. But I could sit around since morning and wait for the delivery guy who finally showed up around noon.

There was no option for after-hours service, neither did I have an option of going somewhere to pick it up at a time that suits me, which is usually the case if you get deliver through “postal/air mail” and the thing is too big to fit in your mailbox.

So while the good news is that I got my package with minimal waiting, the question is how are “regular people” who need to be at work supposed to be receiving packages (assuming they don’t want the shipment to come to their business/work address).