FedEx

I understand that a Canada Post employee was here before to talk about shipping, but they are postal service. Thought I would give some tips about shipping with a Courier in Canada, specifically FedEx.

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I. FedEx Ground and Express are two different companies, the process of shipping is very different. Some info about their services:

-Unless you have a heart being transported to a hospital for surgery, your package cannot be switched from ground to express, contact your shipper/seller and ask for a return then expedite express, or to dispute the express charge to be in line with the service it left as.

-FedEx Ground doesn't ship on the weekends and their facilities are completely closed on weekends too.

-Ground shipments can only be held at the originating station currently they cant be held at third party or office locations, its complicated you can ask in the comments.

-Ground keeps the cost down by having 1 station be responsible for deliveries in multiple cities, chances are if you want to pick up your ground package you may have to travel across a couple suburban areas.

-Express can ONLY deliver Saturday if your city is eligible and if it shipped in a Saturday container, they are the only containers worked on Saturday morning in the facilities.

-Some, not all Express stations are open on saturday, but most FedEx Offices are open Saturday and Sunday.

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II. General info before you buy.

-FedEx is a courier company, they aren't postal so they don't have access to your post box, includes your apartment box as well.

-Always check to see where your product is shipping from I know Newegg will tell you in frustratingly small lettering: ^{ships from Canada.} You don't want to be charged Duties and Taxes.

-If you work during the weekdays, set up your shipment to go to your work address, the drivers go home by 5-6 just like you.

-Not home and you live in an apartment? FedEx will NOT release your package in the hall, packages in the past would always disappear so they don't do that anymore, this is for Express & Ground, only exceptions are to leave it with Apartment manager or Consierge/Security.

-If you live in an apartment make sure to provide your suite AND buzzer, this is the number 1 reason apartment deliveries fail, put it in the secondary address field.

-If you dont have a working buzzer and you are shipping Ground: make the shipping instructions go to your work instead. Like I said before, cant hold near you/cant release, unless your free off work for a whole day, best to ship to work.

-Make sure you have chosen the right address for delivery, if its wrong and you want a reroute, there's a correction fee of $11.50 thats applied to the shipper, you may not get charged, but we need shipper approval.

-The counter to the previous tip is if you were given an email key notifying you it has shipped, you can use that key to log into our site and change the address for free, its the ONLY way to change address for free, dont ask me why, IDK.

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III. Duties and Taxes (D&T).

-For both Express and Ground it is possible to receive your package thinking there's no D&T but still get an invoice in your mail with duties and taxes charged.

-This is always the case for Ground, unless you have a preexisting FedEx account tied to the billing of D&T, for Ground you will get D&T charged on an invoice that comes to your door 3-4 weeks after delivery.

-Express is a fast service, so the duties and taxes are always tried to be done while the package is in transit and if you have a phone on file given to us by the shipper, we give you an automated call as a heads up.

-If your Express package doesn't get assessed for D&T on time, FedEx fronts the bill when it does get assessed and your charge comes to your door 3-4 weeks after delivery.

-If you know you have a package coming from outside of Canada worth more than $20 CAD, expect there to be D&T even if you get your package no problem, after a month and you hear nothing, you're in the clear.

-If you don't have an account for D&T purposes, your invoice charge will include an "advancement fee". If FedEx has to pay customs for your package so it gets released on your behalf, advancement fee is charged, its a $10 flat fee plus the tax on top of it.

-Express brokerage is included in the price of shipping. Ground brokerage is NOT included, it comes as a charge in form of "CEF: clearance entry fee". All disputes come with a Case ID, if you aren't contacted withing 3 business days, call FedEx and give them your Case ID.

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IV. Disputing Duties and Taxes.

-Your invoice doesn't go to collections until after 3 months the first notice is sent to you, you've got some time to dispute.

-Advancement fee with its specific tax can be 1 time disputed and waived off, we advise you at that point to make a D&T account.

-Your package was a gift and its worth less than $60 CAD? you can dispute the whole invoice and waive it off with proof.

-Your package is worth less than $20 CAD? you can dispute the whole invoice and waive it off with proof.

-Package released and then you got a D&T invoice but wouldn't have accepted if you knew? contact seller to retrieve, when its outside Canada you can dispute the whole charge with proof.

-You were charged duties when you know the package was made in North America? You can dispute the duties because of NAFTA and get that portion waived off with proof.

-You had your own brokers working on your package? we can waive off the invoice as long as you submit proof.

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V. Rural Canada.

-FedEx does 90-95% of the shipping of your package if you live in a rural area, then your package is handed off to a third party courier.

-If you live 2-3 hours plus from a main city in Canada, you can expect your package will most likely be handed off to a third party courier.

-If your postal code has a couple of 0's, its a pretty big indication you live in a rural area, EG: v0p0x0.

-Most of our packages are handed off to Canada Post for Rural Areas as they are government owned and as such they are forced to have a way to reach every canadian town in the county.

-Canada Post receives our packages, create their own label and tracking number, and then send the package usually the next day, we usually have access to that tracking number, call FedEx and they can provide it.

-If you live in a Rural area but the third party courier happens to be Canada Post, You Can place your PO box as your address they will deliver it no problem.

-If you live in the territories, you can throw your commitment out the window, the estimated time for delivery is *generally 2-3 weeks most of the time, but im sure you're familiar with this.

-If you live in a rural area, we try out best to make sure our third party partners deliver the packages on time but sometimes it doesn't happen, the commitment is still FedEx's responsibility and if you want to dispute money back, you can.

-If your package stops showing scans thats normal, it means we brought the package as close as we could until we dont have any stations to hop the pkg to, from there the package is given to the third party and the scans "go dark".

-If you want to know where your package is, call FedEx and ask for an Estimated Time of Arrival, there will be a call back, as the rep you're speaking with wont know who the courier company is if its not Canada Post, only the station knows and they are sent a message to call you back.

-If you want to pick up a package, it is the same routine as the previous tip, call FedEx and the rep sends a message to the station to arrange pick up options for you in your town, excluding Canada Post as they go to the Post Office.

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VI. Money Back guarentee (MBG)

-MBG is a commitment to the party that paid FedEx directly. If you paid amazon and they pay FedEx to ship, the money goes to amazon, and depending on their own dispute process, its assumed the money goes back to you.

-If FedEX did not make commitment by even a minute and its something FedEx could have prevented, MBG qualifies.

-If your package is delayed in customs, or cleared customs after the vehicle left, that's not on FedEx and MBG does not qualify.

-Same for weather, FedEx cant control the weather and if a truck or plane is grounded thus delaying your package, MBG doesnt qualify either.

These are absolutely everything i could think of that could directly affect or help you guys here ship your packages, if theres any other questions or want me to go into detail i'll try my best to answer, happy holidays!

SORRY FOR THE FORMATTING, I DID IN THIS GOOGLE DOCS, BUT REDDIT F'ED IT UP

It’s been a month since the FedEx Express-Ground merger here in Ontario, Canada (Other parts of Canada have already merged, while others are merging later this year)

Here are some of my thoughts, bear in mind, It’ll be somewhat all over the place.

The first 2ish weeks were a shit show, with the increased volume + heavy packages wreaking havoc on our little station. Boxes were everywhere, many of them had incorrect postal codes/labels as many of the GTA (Greater toronto area) stations also either gained postal codes or lost postal codes due to the merger. We were getting packages for areas that we no longer delivered too and it kept piling up. This wasn’t a surprise so not sure what happened here but lol.

With the increased size and weight of packages, our station has large package routes, with 2 man teams running out of bigger trucks to deliver any oversized/heavy packages too heavy for a courier to do within a group of postal codes. This has helped out big time making sure that couriers don’t waste too much time at one stop and don’t burn out, but we still get heavyish packages which is to be expected.

Pros of this merger for FedEx and couriers

• Better for customers. Businesses have ALL their stuff picked up now instead of just Express stuff, while the ground stuff would just sit around until the Ground driver got around to it. All businesses I go to for PUPs are happy now

• Tighter areas for couriers means that you aren’t running around all over the places like before, but I guess this does depend station to station and how well staffed you are. All routes have shrunk a fair bit and are a lot closer in area which is good but of course that means more packages to deliver.

Cons

FORGE, I hate this POS app. Takes way too long to do things you were able to do before with ease. Everything is buried in side menus, all the DEX codes are now whatever the hell ground use/d and it just sucks.

• Previously when you got a signature it would ask where you left it i..e security, shipping/receiving, etc. Now there is no option for that. You just get a signature and that's it. CSRs have been getting calls about where we left stuff that’s been signed for (mostly an issue with condos/businesses)

• Taking PPOD, there are two massive black bars top/bottom that obscure the frame so you can’t even see what you’re taking a picture of or what’s in the frame.

• Someone at FedEx has been paid off to use Microsoft Teams instead of dispatch. So now when managers/CSRs want to communicate, we have to make sure we are signed into Teams instead, and only dispatch uses the actual messaging that we previously used. There was no need for this, as the previous dispatch system worked perfectly. The good thing about this new messages app is the ability to attach stops, so you can quickly reference something with dispatch to extend/delete PUPS

• Damaged packaged - you can no longer apply a DEX 37 Damage like before. I used to use this a lot both in station and out delivering and would also use the ‘Damage Delivered’ option to make sure it was documented. Now there isn’t anything like that, all you can do is apply a status code ‘INspection required’ and I guess send it to QA, but it’ll be back on your truck. ANd when you go to deliver it, it’s just the normal process, so many customers are now out right refusing damaged packages because I can’t do what I used to before.

• If you’re a PUP courier like myself, there is no way to sort PUPs by close time. This obviously doesn’t matter for regulars but any PUPs that are oncalls or added at the beginning of your day are all over the place and you gotta look through to see what time they close. When the Americans came to our station to teach us FORGE, I asked them why we can’t and they said that it would be implemented at some point…why it wasn’t already is mind boggling

• If this stupid app crashes, guess what, do your entire timecard from the beginning again. Infuriating.

• Increased package size/weight sucks. Don’t know how you ground guys are doing 150 stops with all this heavy furniture and done by 3, you guys are either incredibly stupid or smart, not sure which. Even with having dedicated people doing the bulky stuff, we still get heavy shit and most of the couriers are already over it and it’s been barely a month. We already have 10+ couriers out on injured leave lmao

Call tags - Possibly the dumbest thing FedEx does. Call Tags are wrecking PUPs for our station, and wasting incredible amounts of time because either the call tags aren’t printing for the PUP that day and couriers are going to PUPs where the customers is expecting the tags OR having the call tags but customers aren’t ready with the packages and having to go back the next day. NOT SURE WHY THIS IS A THING. I DON’T UNDERSTAND PRINTING LABELS ON A CUSTOMER'S BEHALF. THIS WASN'T A THING AT EXPRESS AND YOU PAY INSANE AMOUNTS OF MONEY FOR EXPRESS SHIPPING YET MORON FEDEX DOES THIS FOR GROUND SHIPMENTS? FUCKING STUPID..DON’T KNOW HOIW HARD IT IS FOR CUSTOMERS TO PRINT THEIR OWN LABEL LIKE YOU DO AT EXPRESS. SOON FEDEX WILL HAVE YOU PACKAGE CUSTOMER STUFF TOO. absolute lunacy and easily one of the worst things especially as a PUP courier, the amount of same pups I’ve gone to the past 3 weeks is insane

• SIDs - Loading by SIDs is garbage. heavy things on shelves, light stuff on the floor, addreses that should be together are on different shelves etc.

• The Sequence the FORGE app wants you to follow is absolutely dumb. If you were to follow it, you would burn all your priorities and be late to most of your pickups. No one follows the sequence and we just run it how we used to.

Overall, this merger is great for FedEx as they get one guy to do everything and sucks for couriers with the increased workload. One of the reasons myself and all the other couriers worked at Express compared to UPS/Purolater is that we only delivered the light shit like envelopes, aritzia, etc. Making the same as UPS while doing Express work was great, now it sucks lol.

From the couriers I’ve talked to, the ones who are under 5 years seniority are already looking for other jobs before peak, while the others are hoping to transition into some other non delivery role as even at the 5 year max rate many of us don’t want to deliver furniture all day. I suspect this peak will be an absolute bloodbath.

To all you UPS drivers and FedEx ground drivers, I salute you. I genuinely don’t know how you guys bang out 150+ stops everyday. We at Express were honestly spoiled and I’m wondering how you guys down in the states will compare since everyone here are actual employees now VS whatever they do to you Americans.

To those who are still Express couriers, enjoy it while it lasts. I miss the Express only life.

Any other Canadian couriers want to chime in with their thoughts, I’d love to read your opinions. As for myself, I’m also looking for another job before peak hits, this shit is not worth it anymore.

TLDR: Overnight we went from a courier company to a furniture delivery company. Fuck Wayfair, Fuck chewy, fuck petsmart.