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I have made a few attempts to get an account with Fedex as far back as '94 with the same "no shipping reptiles" response, so I understand. I also agree with you 100% in regards to getting our demands met slowly as we establish a partnership.
Removing the "business to business" clause is not a demand it is a requirement to for us to legaly ship to a residence under their present agreement.
I can think of several options but none are acceptable to me except #4.
1) Conform to the aggreement and only ship to other business's. We don't need the account to ship to business's as we use Delta for that. This account was to offer door to door service to non-business customers.
2) Lie about it and say it's being shipped to a "home based business". This would require permission from the reciever to lie and claim they are a business. This would work in some cases and actualy be true but we feel it is unprofessional to ask our customer to lie about it if in fact they are simply purchasing a "pet".
3) Ship it anyway and see what happens.
4) Get Fedex to remove the business to business requirment and allow a door to door service to residences which is what we mostly use it for.
The fact that they won't honer the time arrival guarantee is simply them taking advantage of us because of the current circumstances. In regards to the time it takes to deliver what difference does it make WHAT is being shipped? As their customers we are paying them for the overnight priority service to get the shipment there by a specific time. We are counting on the time element to lesson the risk to the animals AND lesson our risk from a financial standpoint. We are already giving up ALL liability in regards to live arrival no matter what time it gets there so this is ridiculous!
Here's one senario off the top of my head. A driver has one of our boxes "out for delivery" and also has several other priority shipments that MUST be on time. With this current agreement they can now save ours for last knowing it really dosen't matter what time it gets there. This doesn't seem like an acceptable situation for the animals to be put in as well as the reciever waiting for the shipment. What do we tell our customers who are paying priority shipping prices? It Should be there by such and such a time but we can't really give you a time as Fedex is under no obligation to get it there?
I just see these issues as more reasons for shippers to continue to ship illegally in unmarked boxes and take their chances of not being caught. I hope with time these two issues can be rectified, but under these current conditions I am not willing to sign their waiver.
Tad Fitzgerald
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