Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Ditched Helicopter Award for FedEx

I recently needed to ship a number of my books to Dubai. Fortunately, I started out by Googling “Couriers to Dubai” and discovered interparcel.com where I could enter details of my package and they then come up with the cheapest option. This was £63.40 with FedEx.
So I then packed up the books, went onto the FedEx website only to find that you first needed to set up an account, which I completed and they said an agent would call within 24 hours to get it all organized. Sure enough a few hours later I got a phone call who asked details about me and my company and she said, “You don’t need an account if it’s just a single shipment you’re making you can just do it straight through the website.”
So I then went on the website only to find that you DID need an account so I called them and a very robotic person told me that, “Yes, the only way you could ship in this situation was to do it through her over the phone,” so I thought, “Okay” so we went through the process until we got to the end when she told me the price would be £101.50!
I told her that I’d been quoted £63 and she said, “Oh that must be by Inter[parcel or Parcel2Go, they’re much cheaper than we are.” “But it is still FedEx that they’re shipping through,” I said “Oh yes but they’re much cheaper than us. Would you like to go ahead?” “Why would I want to go ahead with you if I can get it significantly cheaper elsewhere?” to which the reply was, “I don’t know.”
This was really a poor experience, there must be a better way of FedEx handling this situation both to their benefit and their customers’ benefit and as a result this month FedEx get a well deserved Ditched Helicopter Award.

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I am an Oxford based Business Expert, International Speaker, Business Advisor, Author, Mentor and Consultant who (I am told!) inspires and entertains my audiences with my acclaimed 'Staying in the Helicopter®' series of keynote speeches, seminars, workshops and master classes focussed on transformational change and profitable growth. I am a former plc CEO, The Academy for Chief Executives Speaker of the Year and Past-President of The Professional Speakers Association. So what all that means is that I just love working with people helping them to grow and develop their businesses - from the smallest one-man start-up to the largest multi-national corporate. It's all about seeing the wood for the trees, getting up in my helicopter, and keeping it simple! I do believe that business is really simple it's just us human beings that make everything complex.