fed ex doesnt ship live

i just called fed ex head quarters and tehy said they dont ship live i thought there was a way to become certified that u could ship reptiles if so why did this lady say they dont ship live?

Did you look at this thread by any chance??

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33533

I just got my FedEx waiver last week (haven't even used it yet). I just followed the advice on the "How to get FedEx Certified" thread, although it took A LONG time of calling back and forth and leaving messages and following it up. If you read the thread carefully, you will be able to talk to the people at FedEx like it is a normal activity and you can "drop the right names" to them. Otherwise, they will just assume that they don't do it because the person on the phone never heard of it before. I didn't have any luck with follow through until they finally assigned a particular representative to me, which took quite a few calls.

Good luck!

In regards to Fed EX...

I plan to use the procedure described in the thread you mentioned. When you say long do you mean weeks, months? Also, what is the standard shipping rate for Fed Ex overnight? I mainly deal with ball pythons.

Thanks a million,
Todd

I got my box test results at the end of August and just got my FedEx certification mid-November. But I am sure I could have gotten it a lot more quickly if I would have kept calling them back a couple of times per week instead of every couple of weeks. If I had gotten a particlar representative assigned earlier, it would have gone more quickly, I am sure. But I have a special exemption to ship with DHL (but I don't think they are giving them out anymore, and are taking away many of the old ones), so I wasn't in a big hurry.

I haven't used my FedEx account yet, so don't know how much it costs.

Thanks for the quick response, Kathy. It is refreshing to know there is a LEGAL route one can utilize when dealing with reptiles. I have only shipped a few under the table and prefer not to do it that way. I expect a few clutches of BPs in the summertime, so I should have plenty of time to complete the process.

Take care and thanks again,
Todd

Kathy, one more thing,

Can I do this without a business account? I consider myself more of a hobbiest and simply want to sell a few pythons from each clutch for now. I signed up for a personal account tonight and hope this will not be a problem.

TIA,
Todd

FedEx prefers to do this via business accounts. But bear in mind that a home based business is still a business in their eyes. All you need to do is to list your self as "Todd's Enterprises" or something like that and it will suffice for what they want.

Yes, like Rich said, sign up under a business name. You also can only ship to a business (but a home business is ok) or have it held at the local FedEX office for pickup. If it is an expensive and more temperature sensitive (compared to a corn) BP, it is safer to have it held at the office in hot or cold weather than bouncing around in a truck anyway.

Once I made it through the bazillion initial phone calls (in actuality, a run-around of about 6 calls), I finally got put through to someone who would help me. I went into it telling them "I know that FedEx will certify reptile sellers to ship snakes legally through FedEx, I need to know the address to send my test box too and I need to know my local representative who can get me the waiver I need to ship harmless reptiles. I am supposed to have you contact James Brown in legal if you have any questions."

With pretty much that shpeal, I bounced through about 5 or 6 people to get to a very helpful person who actually isn't local but said he'd be glad to handle my account from the main office. I shipped my test box out the next day. Got my results back (photos and all) the following week. Got my waiver the week after that after a few faxings to get signatures in order.

The whole process took me 2 weeks...mostly because I was waiting for my labels from FedEx (note to self, you can just print them off the internet, doy!) for a few days. I probably could have done it in 7 to 10 days max.

It was much less painful than I expected the process to be. I've been shipping with FedEx this spring and have had no problems whatsoever. In fact, I've had 2 carriers asking me questions about not having holes in the outer box and being worried that they would suffocate. It was very cute. No one has even balked or asked to see my waiver yet.

It's nice to be able to label the box with what is really inside and to be able to ship legally.

Yeah, I have to admit that I have had no real snafus with FedEx at all.

Matter of fact, I find it interesting that lately more and more of my ground shipments are coming via FedEx ground. Perhaps FedEx is starting to take a bigger bite out of the giant UPS's hide. Serve them right, if you ask me. I've been requesting that shipments TO me be shipped FedEx as well. Why not support the people who support me?

I haven't had any problems with my live shipments sent out on FedEx. BUT... I have had numerous book shipments sent to me via FedEx Ground that have been returned to the sender, saying they could not deliver them. Once a shipment was sent to me 3 TIMES and they were going to return it (AGAIN! - but as damaged the third time around), but I was tracking it online and insisted that I wanted to inspect it. There was no damage at all. They just can't seem to find us, or don't want to. True, we do live out in the boonies. But UPS and DHL find us just fine. So now I have to insist that shipments coming to me are not sent by FedEx as it is more hassle than I want to deal with.

I have trouble with Fed Ex ground all of the time. Most of the ground drivers around here are contract drivers and do not work for Fed Ex and really could care less about their work.