April- FedEx does use contracted drivers for Ground deliveries. You basically bid for your route, then execute it. Air and Overnight deliveries are handled by FedEx employed drivers. Nothing has changed there.
What has changed is the weather! Such a horrible winter for severe weather. The worst we have seen in 5+ years.
DOAs are still rare, but they happen, and the extreme temps and delays don't help.
In January and February weather was so consistently bad that not many reptiles were being shipped. Then the weather "broke" a bit and seemed nicer in mid February. A TON of packages flooded the system. Not just reptiles, all kinds of shipments. THAT then caused system overloads and delays.
The following week, weather was bad again, but many folks were still trying to catch up from the horrible weather. MORE crazy delays.
Those two weeks marked two achievements- Two of our biggest weeks ever for reptile shipping volume, just monsters. But also our two biggest weeks ever for delays and issues, MONSTERS.
In one week we refunded over $6000 for late arrival packages. Crazy. If that happened every week we'd be broke in a month.
But then it smoothed back out. Volume is a bit higher than a normal March, folks still trying to catch up (some vendors had 50+ shipments waiting to go out), but delays are pretty minimal right now.
And the winter is ending, hooray, so good weather shipping should be more typical.
FedEx doesn't offer any late arrival refunds, and no DOA coverage either. At SYR, FedEx doesn't give US any refunds either. It is prohibited in the Reptile Certification contract you have to sign to create a certified FedEx account.
We created our own insurance program, and it is all self-funded. As long as you get the minimum insurance of $2.50, you are eligible for a complete refund of the shipping cost if the package is one minute or more late after the Guaranteed Time of arrival. Very simple.
DOA coverage is more specific, you can read up about that on our site.
DOAs are definitely rare, but they do happen, usually when the package misses delivery and is a day delayed. We have paid out a few thousand dollars in DOAs so far this year. It is never good to lose an animal, proper packaging and heat pack use will protect you in most every instance.
OVERUSE of heat packs will doom you in most instances as well. The most common cause of DOAs is overuse and misuse of heat packs. We have very specific heat pack guidelines on the site. And we are always happy to help with specific questions.