EXPRESS DELIVERY — The Consumer Playbook

We’re starting to emerge from a pandemic. Everyone is trying to find their way. Howard and I found our initial awakening in a photograph.
Aside from missing all of the things that everyone missed over the last year —going out to dinner, seeing friends and family in person—Howard and I have missed museums and art galleries. Now that things are opening up, we found a very weird photograph in a gallery and decided that we had to have it. Why weird? 1930s, a severe looking woman holding a cigarette, but wearing a dress with flowers on it. The flowers juxtaposed against the severity of the woman’s demeanor make the image that much more interesting. We loved it. Or, rather, Howard loved it. She grew on me.
Arranging the purchase wasn’t so difficult. Dealing with shipping was difficult. The gallery was good about moving quickly and set up shipping through FedEx, next day, before noon. With the gallery being so efficient, with their having a relationship with FedEx, we thought that the transport would be seamless. It wasn’t. Nothing is seamless in our new bizzaro world. We’ve had our packages delivered to our neighbor’s address. Howard’s birthday card from Tracy arrived 3 months late, in a plastic bag, with the envelope, but missing the card. Gee, the Post Office can be creative. I’m trying to be patient, and I understand that the pandemic has caused real problems everywhere, but sometimes, I wonder if part of the snafus are creative sabotage. Maybe, maybe not.
We started to track our photograph. On the day of delivery, we saw that it was on the truck at 8AM, and Tracking showed us that it would be delivered before noon, as promised. Around 11:00, Tracking showed delivery by “end of day”. That’s not what we paid for. And we were concerned—not only did we have to stick around the house all day for a signature, but more important, was this not-so-easy-to-find photograph lost?
Howard called the FedEx Customer Service line. Long hold and never did reach a representative. I tried to escalate. I googled the phone number for the FedEx Executive office and reached an Escalation representative. She looked for the order number and told me that our package would be delivered by end of day. I already knew that. I asked for specifics. Apathetic, she told me that the delay was due to a delayed flight. I told her that the package was coming from New York. Continuing on the indifferent spectrum, Miss Feckless told me that severe storms were causing delays. I told her that there hadn’t been storms since last night. While I thought that storms and delayed flights could have caused a delay for everyone if packages from out of the area were to go on the truck, with our package initially showing as on the truck at 8AM and slated for delivery by noon, her response didn’t help at all. My inclination was to contact the gallery and suggest that they use another vendor for shipping—not a threat; for real. I told her that. More apathy. I’d wasted enough time and ended the call.
The photograph turned up around 2:15. Ultimately, this whole issue was annoying but not a really big deal. But, there’s a bigger problem. I was fed up.(FedEx’d up?) Too many snafus over too long a period of time. And what do I do when there’s a service problem? I go up the ladder.
Solving The Problem:
1) I googled more details about the Executive Office for FedEx. I used more specific search words—Executives; Contact Executives, etc.
2) I located the email addresses for 2 Customer Service managers. I emailed them about the problematic service, the apathetic Escalation representative, and let them know that I would try to work with the gallery to let them know about the problems and see if they would consider changing shipping vendors.
No response.
Howard thought that I was nuts to continue. But, I was on a mission. And how many people have had similar experiences and are silent? We’ve even had similar experiences, ourselves, yet I’d been silent, feeling that pandemic mode wasn’t a good time for consumerism. As you know, that isn’t me. But hey, these are weird times.
Next Steps:

1) Back to Google. I located more Executive names and settled on VP of Customer Service. Perhaps I should have started there.
2) I forwarded the Customer Service Manger email that I had sent earlier. This time, it went to the VP. Within 2 hours, I received a call from a representative in Service Recovery.
3) I explained the problems—Inability to reach anyone in standard Customer Service. Operational issues—Expedited shipping was a paid for and promised service that was not delivered. The Escalation representative was awful. And the CS management team was unresponsive. The Service Recovery rep was interested in all of the issues. And, Surprise!—she had already asked that the Escalation supervisor pull my call with the apathetic Escalation rep before Service Recovery called me. This gave me confidence that my issues were being taken seriously. I’m sure that the Escalation rep was sitting at her desk, continuing to fail to do her job, thinking that she was immune from any scrutiny. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when her supervisor spoke with her.
What did I accomplish? The Service Recovery rep now knows about the service problems that were evident in my specific problem and can attempt to fix them. She could deal with indifferent staff. And I now have the contact information for this effective and responsive management representative in case there’s a problem that warrants escalation in the future.
Well, I’ve got my mojo back and I dealt with a problem.
EVEN IN ODD TIMES, BEING A VOCAL CONSUMER GETS RESULTS