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Ah FedEx and their weird accounts. My wife, a US citizen living in Ireland, needed a US background check as she works with children. The police department in T
by DoubleGlazing 7y ago
Ah FedEx and their weird accounts.
My wife, a US citizen living in Ireland, needed a US background check as she works with children. The police department in Texas did the work needed and said they could only ship the documents internationally via FedEx. So she asked how much? They said "Oh no, you need to arrange collection and pay FedEx directly"
So off to FedEx she goes thinking she could arrange this as a one off. Nope, you need an account and it has to be set up online. Their account opening forms are really complicated. To be fair, they are probably for people who know about shipping and not for someone who just wants a one-off collection. It took three attempts to get the correct account and to be fair the documents arrived in less than 24hrs which coming from Texas was very impressive.
What happened next is where it gets annoying. She needed to close the accounts as she wouldn't be using them. FedEx said that had to be done offline in writing and she needed to supply a company registration certificate, she had written "Personal account" in the company field on all the account set up forms as it could not be left blank. While she was trying to get this resolved, she got a letter from Revenue asking her to fill in a load of documents relating to customs matters.
Eventually she just went to FedEx's Irish HQ in person to get it all sorted.
I'm not sure who is more to blame, the Texas PD for refusing to arrange the delivery or FedEx for completely ignoring that individuals may be forced to use their service. Either way it was a pain.
- nurettin 7y agoIt's funny, when we get a situation like that during an abroad visit, we find a turkish guy who puts in the right numbers and calls in the right people to get things done. Otherwise you get the average European apathetic office worker mentality who only cares about getting out of work at 1630 and going to a cafe.
- Bjartr 7y agoSounds like an average human office worker.
- moftz 7y agoThere is probably some courier service that could have picked it up and handled the FedEx shipment. It would have cost a little more but you would have only needed to make a single call.