9 ms·

FedEx launches new e-commerce platform

192 points by jollofricepeas 3y ago

ivraatiems 3y ago
I'm confused by this. Amazon's not an "e-commerce platform"; it's a store that's half Walmart and half flea-market. Shopify is an "e-commerce platform" to me. Which of these is FedEx intending to be?
- CapitalistCartr 3y ago
  Fedex execs have no idea, and it shows.
  - Axsuul 3y ago
    They also have data that we have no idea about, and it shows.
    - selimthegrim 3y ago
      FedEx Dataworks has been hiring quite a bit
- colechristensen 3y ago
  Amazon is a mediocre storefront on top of a high performance logistics company. FedEx already has much of the logistics and it wouldn’t take much to compete with Amazon on the storefront side because the experience is so bad.
  - rezonant 3y ago
    Yeah honestly this could work out for them-- but the name makes me think of FTX...
  - pstuart 3y ago
    Harvesting and curating offerings from AliExpress would be fast way of starting out...
    - datadrivenangel 3y ago
      Drop shippers will do it automatically without FedEx needing to do any work.
      - rezonant 3y ago
        Honestly, low quality drop shipping is to me Amazon's greatest vulnerability. I would hope FedEx doesn't inherit the same vulnerability.
      - jtbayly 3y ago
        Which might be their plan. But then what’s the point? All you’ve done is recreate the crap experience of Amazon. Why should anybody switch?
        CoastalCoder 3y ago
        > All you’ve done is recreate the crap experience of Amazon. Why should anybody switch? Well, if FedEx Prime Video didn't insert ads in my videos, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      So, like, Amazon’s business model but with one fewer middlemen? Seems plausible enough.
- JBorrow 3y ago
  It seems to be a competitor to Amazon FBA
- WheatMillington 3y ago
  Don't get too caught up in the language.
ezxs 3y ago
Beautiful... except they can't even compete with Amazon on shipping (literally had to have 3 things re-delivered just in the last 2 weeks). I would focus on their current business first.
- rezonant 3y ago
  As usual, anecdotes are anecdotes. I consistently have a great experience with FedEx. It's almost like its a huge company that is only as effective as the humans that execute it's operations in a given area. In other news, people in different areas share wildly different experiences with the quality of their local McDonalds service. The jury is out, is McDonalds service entirely and objectively good or entirely and objectively bad? We investigate at 11.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    I also consistently have a great time working with FedEx, UPS, and USPS for both shipping and receiving. If something comes up for me, more than likely it's actually the shipper/receiver screwing something up with the paperwork on their end or the information provided to me. Also, I'll mention that Amazon FBA isn't even competing for my money or time. I can't use them, since I don't sell anything through Amazon nor pay for Amazon Prime if I buy something from Amazon. Meanwhile, FedEx and UPS are almost always available anywhere, and USPS also remains an option everywhere if the shipment is something they handle.
  - mattl 3y ago
    I dread receiving anything by FedEx. UPS is fine. I would frequently just get stuff not delivered by FedEx and then be expected to go to a warehouse to pick it up, which via public transportation is a two/three hour round trip.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    This is actually a pretty interesting comparison. McDonald’s is franchised and so quality is highly dependent on the franchisee. FedEx is the odd one out in major delivery companies in that their model subcontracts to local companies in a similar fashion with the expected wild variance in quality. UPS is wholly owned and operated as a comparison.
nektro 3y ago
best of luck to them! :)
milkglass 3y ago
fdX x Shopify could be deadly
- Tempest1981 3y ago
  Deadly for whom?
- gorbypark 3y ago
  It's a shame that Shopify seems to have completely dropped their plans to get into logistics.
ttt3ts 3y ago
Amazon FBA takes a big percentage, abuses sellers/brands, and significantly limits business models (e.g. international sucks) There is a market here. I hope they pull it off.
- donor20 3y ago
  I find FBA / the logistics side great. In urban areas they are running multiple deliveries a day and reliability / speed is crazy good. So I feel like they are delivering well there. Oddly it’s the seller / brands / marketplace quality that I wish they focused on more - even if that involved more brand cancellations etc. So my experience is that the Amazon logistics side is great but seller product quality often isn’t
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Are you a buyer or seller? If you are a seller, what do you think of the GP's concerns?
    - donor20 3y ago
      I’ve sold, worked with real (not dropship) businesses that sell and a customer. As a seller going through multiple channels if you are selling books for example - Amazon basically pays - many bookstores slow pay, even distributors can get way behind and require lots of phone time. The trade is that it’s all on amazons terms. Same thing with fulfillment- many sellers complaining have never actually run a warehouse and done pick / ship. I don’t doubt complaints by sellers are valid, I just wish Amazon dialed down the marketplace side because it’s too full of junk for me
      - ttt3ts 3y ago
        I work with a bunch of brands and the marketplace itself is a huge problem. Stolen goods, return fraud, Amazon directly competing after finding a profitable brand/product, chinese knockoffs/junk, mixed inventory, ads, many more. The tools amazon provides to combat these are largely useless. Diving into one I think is detrimental to both sellers and customers, Ads. If you are not a huge brand this is a ~mandatory additional cost on top of FBA (or you won't show in results). As a customer it sucks because many of the top results are trash. Why bother having a decent product if you can just buy a ranking and some fake reviews? Amazon is pushing this so hard right now as it is a quickly growing revenue stream for them :(
arusahni 3y ago
As a resident of a major metropolitan area, FedEx shipping is the worst of the providers (including DHL and Lazership). They regularly claim to attempt a delivery but don't even come to my home, nor do they deliver to my front (as called out in my delivery instructions), but instead leave packages by my garbage bins. tl;dr: good luck.
- mcmcmc 3y ago
  I think the quality of delivery service for the other carriers is highly dependent on your local market, UPS in the town I recently moved to is godawful. Their customer support process is equally shit though and that's the same across most of the world though I'd assume.
rayrey 3y ago
April 1st came early
donor20 3y ago
Funny how the article talks about Amazon using contractors - at least around here FedEx ground looks very similar staffing side - but article didn’t mention that
- twodave 3y ago
  Yeah, this is actually a more important point than many realize. And it’s not just like they pay their drivers via 1099. There are third party companies that use fleets of their own, marked with FedEx branding to deliver packages. This is different from e.g. UPS, who afaik owns all their own fleets. It is imo more difficult to maintain consistent quality and predictable service with FedEx’s model, which I think is why their service is so bad in my area in particular. My family has a running joke that if it’s FedEx the delivery date is like the pirate code… “more like a guideline”
RagnarD 3y ago
I'm sure it'll be no problem to compete with Amazon warehouses, gargantuan stockpiles of product strategically placed across the country (and increasingly, the world) for rapid fulfillment.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
If y'all are struggling to find good customer service from an online storefront, please allow me to recommend Office Depot / Office Max. I have found that they've got a great selection of electronics, kitchen supplies, and of course office goods, and they are not a marketplace: they do not permit 3rd-party sellers. They have house brands and name brands, and they sell all through their own stores and warehouses. The shopping experience both online and in-person is a breeze. Their logistics are great; when I went shopping for my Christmas gifts in the evening of 12/25, I scored free next-day delivery. I picked up a cable modem, some plasticware, and an executive office chair. They were all delivered via Uber next-day to my doorstep. Some originated from my local store, and some from across town. As a bonus, their CopyMAX location allows me to securely shred documents for a song. They contract that out with Iron Mountain. I've got a membership; I earn points and valuable coupons every time I shop. It's basically worry-free, and the staff at my store is friendly, and they seem to be respected and supported by management, even though the storefront is a veritable ghost town by now. I've been able to avoid any entanglements with Newegg and Target and Best Buy, where I've had some bad experiences. Office Depot/MAX is my go-to, first choice now for just about anything.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  > they are not a marketplace Sold! Thank you for sharing. It seems the marketplace nonsense and its fake vendors who have their products comingled with legit vendors have ruined almost every online store.
  - gorbypark 3y ago
    Yeah it's crazy how many do it now, too. I just noticed the other day that Decathlon (in Spain, at least) is now selling crap from other vendors as well.
atlgator 3y ago
My personal experience with FedEx is they can't even match UPS for last mile delivery. How do they expect to compete with Amazon (and by extension Walmart) on e-commerce?
- randerson 3y ago
  FedEx won't even complete the last mile for me. UPS and USPS bring packages to my front door. FedEx, despite having identical instructions, leaves my packages in the street.
  - atlgator 3y ago
    Same!
hipadev23 3y ago
Is FedEx going to allow ecom customers to access the same same-day blisteringly fast Amazon drivers or are we stuck with their garbage delivery network?
- EGreg 3y ago
  They’ll get there. When demand is there
farhanhubble 3y ago
Amazon has a billion times better logistics, software infra and data intelligence. Fedex's only competency is *null*.
rhuru 3y ago
Only if they do their current business well others can create effective competition for Amazon. It took me 3+ hours to just get a label from their website for a special hardware I had to ship. Fun part is that after I signup and create and account and login, they want me to "Create an account", which I suppose it is their internal terminology for some kind of payment profile. Then they did not allow me to create that either demanding I call up their customer service.
- neilv 3y ago
  Similar here. I blew half an hour trying to schedule a Fedex pickup. Which left the 2 kinds of accounts on their site. Which recently they decided to start carpet-bombing with marketing emails. With unsubscribe links that led to runarounds, and no way to get to a place to opt-out in my account. Eventually got to somewhere they said I had to call their customer service to make them stop. At this point, I took the unprecedented step of adding an email rule to never see any email from that company again. Of course Fedex figured out logistics decades ago. But their consumer IT experience I've seen thus far is ridiculously bad, and has a vibe that they really don't care. (Contrast with Amazon's vibe: Bezos once cared, and that will take a long time for the company to completely unlearn, although lately they can coast and cash out on legacy goodwill and entrenchment.) Are businesses going to let Fedex operate any consumer-facing facet other than the package showing up on doorstep?
  - Ographer 3y ago
    Same experience here, seems like a bit of Conway's Law. Their website is set up to mirror their own internal structure instead of a way that is actually customer friendly. My first thought of shopping on FedEx is how awful it would be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      It's a really bad case of Conway's Law if it doesn't only impact the design of the underlying system, but even impacts the UI
physhster 3y ago
FedEx can't get a package delivered on time... I have a really hard time seeing how a technologically outdated legacy corporation could compete with Amazon fulfillment and other 3PLs...
- AwaAwa 3y ago
  Either they will or they won't. Ultimately anything that provides competition to Amazon is good.
w0z_ 3y ago
This is an interesting problem. If FedEx's platform can't promise 1 or 2-day delivery, it will never take off. On the other end of the spectrum, Amazon promises 1-2 day delivery but has been falling through more often than first seen and can become a 2-4 day delivery. Amazon does seem to absolutely bleed their workforce to keep up, but also push more absolute junk through their platform now. Costco is in kind of a prime position to offer quality-tested products with 1-2 day delivery... but they just do not care to offer this "Prime" type of service. Costco is still quick, just not as quick, and their website / app is trash to use compared to Amazon. One honest competitor I see rising up - Home Depot. They are making incredible moves in this space (in terms of web/app UI/UX and expedited deliverable date).
- next_xibalba 3y ago
  > Amazon promises 1-2 day delivery but has been falling through more often than first seen and can become a 2-4 day delivery I’ve seen this claimed a few times lately here on HN but it hasn’t been my experience at all. Is there any data out there to support this claim?
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    It really depends where you live. My brother lives close to an Amazon distribution center and often gets orders same day. I quit Amazon years ago but my wife still uses it, seems like most things take 2-3 days.
  - constGard 3y ago
    I doubt you'll find anything other than anecdotes, as only Amazon has the actual data in aggregate. They'll often promise me today or tomorrow and deliver 4-20 days later in some extreme cases.
  - spike021 3y ago
    I live in the Bay Area in a pretty commonly known city. Frequently the product listing on Amazon says eligible for 2-day or 1-day Prime Delivery. Many times despite doing that it takes 3-4 days or longer.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I feel like folks are hyper focused on the delivery side. That just seems super important to me. Just me, but there's like 2-3 times a year I want something fast. I bounce on and off Prime because it just doesn't matter to me. The real problems seem much deeper to me. Amazon's warehouses, their online store, their ability to handle disputes: that much deeper integration feels like the challenge FedEx faces.
lucasyvas 3y ago
Do you figure it's easier to become a shipping company or an ecommerce platform? I don't suspect they'll pull it off, but it's not the worst idea I've heard. Walmart always makes me think similar but not in the same way. Ultimately, the in-person retail experience still offers its own conveniences so that's a good feature.
- themadturk 3y ago
  Only if they have what you want in stock. I was shopping at my local Walmart Supercenter today and they had no black shoe polish. I can get it through their website, if I want to pay for shipping.
amingilani 3y ago
> enabling merchants to give estimated delivery dates to customers during shopping and ordering It’ll be a new era when FedEx can give accurate delivery estimates. Last time I recall paying for next day delivery and wondering how my package will traverse all of Canada in that time. I then watched the delivery estimate update to “tomorrow” every day for a week until it finally delivered.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  I love when my package decides to head back to Alberta.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" - which night that is, is unspecified.
- voakbasda 3y ago
  Came here to report similarly. They cannot estimate package delivery times with any accuracy for my rural address. They virtually always gaslight us with false delivery dates. They are a running joke in our household. For a company that should have all of the data necessary for training a system to do a better job, their systems are a farce. I would love to hear the FedEx engineers defend this status quo.
amluto 3y ago
I’m glad it’s a “platform,” because FedEx appears institutionally incapable of making a usable website or mobile app. But maybe they can pull off a “platform.” :)
- mingabunga 3y ago
  You're absolutely right. Their website is terrible to book anything on or do any admin with, probably got many different antiquated systems in the background
- djtango 3y ago
  was looking for this comment. If their core website is anything to go by, I doubt they can run an ecommerce business. I've never felt more nervous about using an online service than when I had to internationally Fedex my passport to get it renewed. If Amazon offered such a postal service I'd use that in a heartbeat with full confidence.
zeroCalories 3y ago
Am I going schizophrenic, or are the last two paragraphs the same? Is the verge writing articles with AI now? Sounds cool though. Good luck to FedEx.
throwaway19091p 3y ago
I can't remember the last time FedEx actually correctly delivered a package to either my house, or my place of business. They have left expensive switches in the middle of parking lots at wrong buildings in the rain and marked it as delivered. Whenever I see that a company is using FedEx to deliver something to me, I lose all hope that it will actually arrive at the correct address, let alone arriving on time.
breitling 3y ago
I was am Amazon seller and absolutely hated it. It is seemingly all run by bots. They delisted my product and none of the humans knew why. It is a bot that decided that and no one could answer what the reason was. I welcome any competition that is more friendly to sellers.
- lolinder 3y ago
  It's all bots from the customer side too! AI-generated product names and descriptions with AI-generated reviews [0]. Half the books on there these days are AI-generated knockoffs of someone else's work. I think it's not just sellers who would welcome some competition in this space. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38971012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38971012
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  I almost stopped shopping at Amazon. There is very little reason left. It is filled with no-name crap by companies with auto generated names. I might as well buy it from Aliexpress or Temu, same crap but at a fraction of a cost and the latter is really aggressive about cheap shipping. For something more serious either buy directly from the brand, or from Costco, Target, Walmart, HomeDepot, BedBath&Beyond, BestBuy, Macy's, publisher's website, some specialized hardware, electronics or hobby shops. There is still a limited number of things where Amazon beats others, but their quality went down, and hassle free return is not hassle free anymore. On top of that, they exhibit highly unethical behavior when it comes to counterfeit books. Here is a good thread by François Chollet about his book: https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1550930876183166976 https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1550930876183166976. The main takeaway is this: Q: What is Amazon doing about it? A: Nothing. We've notified them multiple times, nothing happened. The fraudulent sellers have been in activity for years. The issue affects ~100% of Amazon sales of the book since March or April. That's because, amazingly, since fraudsters are claiming to have inventory, Amazon has stopped carrying its own inventory for the book (i.e. it has stopped ordering new copies from the publisher). This is mind blowing to me, that they are still in the business of selling books. And they did not really solve last mile delivery. Yeah, it is still faster, but I can wait for my sneakers for 5 days, instead of 2-3 and many retail chains can now delivery something to you in 3-5 biz days and can beat Amazon on return policy or warranty. It's odd that market forces aren't correcting this for Amazon.
fedexthrowaway 3y ago
I've known a fair amount of people that have worked at FedEx corporate, poached talent from there, etc. I sincerely don't think they are going to turn the ship with the technical culture they have in place. It's abysmal, dysfunctional, and weighed down with so much red tape. Many engineers are just a cog in some large machine. Communication seems absolutely draconian. Perhaps this is most companies that age and size but I simply would bet against any of their new technical endeavors without radical change in their organizational structures. I'd love to be proven wrong though. Healthy competition is a good thing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
happytiger 3y ago
This is a mixed bag. It’s awesome to have competition. On the other hand this launch could blunt antitrust / monopoly efforts against Amazon.
- collegeburner 3y ago
  ... because it could reduce amazon's marketshare and pricing power? which would reduce the supposed need for such efforts. is this just schadenfreude desire to see amazon get fucked in court?
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Nope. Because it’s likely not going to be successful but would be, like Apple to Microsoft in the 90s, the small slice competitor that keeps government action from happening.
armini 3y ago
would have been smarter if they just partnered with Shopify. A lot of people are leaving amazon & setting up their own stores with Shopify.
- voakbasda 3y ago
  That’s sad. Trading one marketplace for another. What happened to independent e-commerce solutions that you can stand up in your own server room? Does no one run their own store anymore?
srmarm 3y ago
This is interesting. Putting aside AWS, Amazon has for a long time been a logistics company at it's core - the website is terrible from a customer perspective, pricing isn't great and the seller/supplier experience is certainly weighted in Amazon's favour. What they have is the critical mass of customers who are invested in prime and it's the default choice. I hate them but if I need something quick I generally hold my nose and ask my wife to order on her account. Other sellers can achieve delivery just as quick, it's just inconsistent between sites. As someone who builds ecommerce sites and has seen Amazon become dominant I've thought about how to solve this problem many times - it requires deep pockets and most importantly good logistics. I've often thought if a logistics company expanded their shopping cart plugins to also (optionally) feed back data to a central ordering system and included their own payment solution to allow direct from customer ordering with centralised ordering, payment and logistics - perhaps at a loss until a prime type offering could be built there would be a potential for a strong business. Amazon take a huge amount of fees a chunk of which go to putting the wrong product in front of the customer!
- _puk 3y ago
  Whilst Amazon has nailed logistics (especially last mile), it's real value is in reduced cognitive load. You know when you shop there that what you order will arrive quickly, no convoluted delivery charges, and a returns policy that shook the industry up completely
  - subpixel 3y ago
    Agreed. In fact there are significant parts of the US where 1 or 2 day delivery is not available. But people who live there, like me, use Amazon often because it's the 'easy button'.
christkv 3y ago
They want to call the product fdx but don't seem to have secured the domain for it. Weird.
passedandfuture 3y ago
FedEx is a terrible delivery service. I refuse to use them. Maybe before attempting to rival Amazon, they should focus on improving their core operations first.

I'm confused by this. Amazon's not an "e-commerce platform"; it's a store that's half Walmart and half flea-market. Shopify is an "e-commerce platform" to me. Which of these is FedEx intending to be?

CapitalistCartr 3y ago
Fedex execs have no idea, and it shows.
- Axsuul 3y ago
  They also have data that we have no idea about, and it shows.
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    FedEx Dataworks has been hiring quite a bit
colechristensen 3y ago
Amazon is a mediocre storefront on top of a high performance logistics company. FedEx already has much of the logistics and it wouldn’t take much to compete with Amazon on the storefront side because the experience is so bad.
- rezonant 3y ago
  Yeah honestly this could work out for them-- but the name makes me think of FTX...
- pstuart 3y ago
  Harvesting and curating offerings from AliExpress would be fast way of starting out...
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    Drop shippers will do it automatically without FedEx needing to do any work.
    - rezonant 3y ago
      Honestly, low quality drop shipping is to me Amazon's greatest vulnerability. I would hope FedEx doesn't inherit the same vulnerability.
    - jtbayly 3y ago
      Which might be their plan. But then what’s the point? All you’ve done is recreate the crap experience of Amazon. Why should anybody switch?
      - CoastalCoder 3y ago
        > All you’ve done is recreate the crap experience of Amazon. Why should anybody switch? Well, if FedEx Prime Video didn't insert ads in my videos, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    So, like, Amazon’s business model but with one fewer middlemen? Seems plausible enough.
JBorrow 3y ago
It seems to be a competitor to Amazon FBA
WheatMillington 3y ago
Don't get too caught up in the language.

ezxs 3y ago

Beautiful... except they can't even compete with Amazon on shipping (literally had to have 3 things re-delivered just in the last 2 weeks). I would focus on their current business first.

rezonant 3y ago
As usual, anecdotes are anecdotes. I consistently have a great experience with FedEx. It's almost like its a huge company that is only as effective as the humans that execute it's operations in a given area. In other news, people in different areas share wildly different experiences with the quality of their local McDonalds service. The jury is out, is McDonalds service entirely and objectively good or entirely and objectively bad? We investigate at 11.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  I also consistently have a great time working with FedEx, UPS, and USPS for both shipping and receiving. If something comes up for me, more than likely it's actually the shipper/receiver screwing something up with the paperwork on their end or the information provided to me. Also, I'll mention that Amazon FBA isn't even competing for my money or time. I can't use them, since I don't sell anything through Amazon nor pay for Amazon Prime if I buy something from Amazon. Meanwhile, FedEx and UPS are almost always available anywhere, and USPS also remains an option everywhere if the shipment is something they handle.
- mattl 3y ago
  I dread receiving anything by FedEx. UPS is fine. I would frequently just get stuff not delivered by FedEx and then be expected to go to a warehouse to pick it up, which via public transportation is a two/three hour round trip.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  This is actually a pretty interesting comparison. McDonald’s is franchised and so quality is highly dependent on the franchisee. FedEx is the odd one out in major delivery companies in that their model subcontracts to local companies in a similar fashion with the expected wild variance in quality. UPS is wholly owned and operated as a comparison.

nektro 3y ago

best of luck to them! :)

milkglass 3y ago

fdX x Shopify could be deadly

Tempest1981 3y ago
Deadly for whom?
gorbypark 3y ago
It's a shame that Shopify seems to have completely dropped their plans to get into logistics.

ttt3ts 3y ago

Amazon FBA takes a big percentage, abuses sellers/brands, and significantly limits business models (e.g. international sucks) There is a market here. I hope they pull it off.

donor20 3y ago
I find FBA / the logistics side great. In urban areas they are running multiple deliveries a day and reliability / speed is crazy good. So I feel like they are delivering well there. Oddly it’s the seller / brands / marketplace quality that I wish they focused on more - even if that involved more brand cancellations etc. So my experience is that the Amazon logistics side is great but seller product quality often isn’t
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Are you a buyer or seller? If you are a seller, what do you think of the GP's concerns?
  - donor20 3y ago
    I’ve sold, worked with real (not dropship) businesses that sell and a customer. As a seller going through multiple channels if you are selling books for example - Amazon basically pays - many bookstores slow pay, even distributors can get way behind and require lots of phone time. The trade is that it’s all on amazons terms. Same thing with fulfillment- many sellers complaining have never actually run a warehouse and done pick / ship. I don’t doubt complaints by sellers are valid, I just wish Amazon dialed down the marketplace side because it’s too full of junk for me
    - ttt3ts 3y ago
      I work with a bunch of brands and the marketplace itself is a huge problem. Stolen goods, return fraud, Amazon directly competing after finding a profitable brand/product, chinese knockoffs/junk, mixed inventory, ads, many more. The tools amazon provides to combat these are largely useless. Diving into one I think is detrimental to both sellers and customers, Ads. If you are not a huge brand this is a ~mandatory additional cost on top of FBA (or you won't show in results). As a customer it sucks because many of the top results are trash. Why bother having a decent product if you can just buy a ranking and some fake reviews? Amazon is pushing this so hard right now as it is a quickly growing revenue stream for them :(

arusahni 3y ago

As a resident of a major metropolitan area, FedEx shipping is the worst of the providers (including DHL and Lazership). They regularly claim to attempt a delivery but don't even come to my home, nor do they deliver to my front (as called out in my delivery instructions), but instead leave packages by my garbage bins. tl;dr: good luck.

mcmcmc 3y ago
I think the quality of delivery service for the other carriers is highly dependent on your local market, UPS in the town I recently moved to is godawful. Their customer support process is equally shit though and that's the same across most of the world though I'd assume.

rayrey 3y ago

April 1st came early

donor20 3y ago

Funny how the article talks about Amazon using contractors - at least around here FedEx ground looks very similar staffing side - but article didn’t mention that

twodave 3y ago
Yeah, this is actually a more important point than many realize. And it’s not just like they pay their drivers via 1099. There are third party companies that use fleets of their own, marked with FedEx branding to deliver packages. This is different from e.g. UPS, who afaik owns all their own fleets. It is imo more difficult to maintain consistent quality and predictable service with FedEx’s model, which I think is why their service is so bad in my area in particular. My family has a running joke that if it’s FedEx the delivery date is like the pirate code… “more like a guideline”

RagnarD 3y ago

I'm sure it'll be no problem to compete with Amazon warehouses, gargantuan stockpiles of product strategically placed across the country (and increasingly, the world) for rapid fulfillment.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

If y'all are struggling to find good customer service from an online storefront, please allow me to recommend Office Depot / Office Max. I have found that they've got a great selection of electronics, kitchen supplies, and of course office goods, and they are not a marketplace: they do not permit 3rd-party sellers. They have house brands and name brands, and they sell all through their own stores and warehouses. The shopping experience both online and in-person is a breeze. Their logistics are great; when I went shopping for my Christmas gifts in the evening of 12/25, I scored free next-day delivery. I picked up a cable modem, some plasticware, and an executive office chair. They were all delivered via Uber next-day to my doorstep. Some originated from my local store, and some from across town. As a bonus, their CopyMAX location allows me to securely shred documents for a song. They contract that out with Iron Mountain. I've got a membership; I earn points and valuable coupons every time I shop. It's basically worry-free, and the staff at my store is friendly, and they seem to be respected and supported by management, even though the storefront is a veritable ghost town by now. I've been able to avoid any entanglements with Newegg and Target and Best Buy, where I've had some bad experiences. Office Depot/MAX is my go-to, first choice now for just about anything.

ajmurmann 3y ago
> they are not a marketplace Sold! Thank you for sharing. It seems the marketplace nonsense and its fake vendors who have their products comingled with legit vendors have ruined almost every online store.
- gorbypark 3y ago
  Yeah it's crazy how many do it now, too. I just noticed the other day that Decathlon (in Spain, at least) is now selling crap from other vendors as well.

atlgator 3y ago

My personal experience with FedEx is they can't even match UPS for last mile delivery. How do they expect to compete with Amazon (and by extension Walmart) on e-commerce?

randerson 3y ago
FedEx won't even complete the last mile for me. UPS and USPS bring packages to my front door. FedEx, despite having identical instructions, leaves my packages in the street.
- atlgator 3y ago
  Same!

hipadev23 3y ago

Is FedEx going to allow ecom customers to access the same same-day blisteringly fast Amazon drivers or are we stuck with their garbage delivery network?

EGreg 3y ago
They’ll get there. When demand is there

farhanhubble 3y ago

Amazon has a billion times better logistics, software infra and data intelligence. Fedex's only competency is *null*.

rhuru 3y ago

Only if they do their current business well others can create effective competition for Amazon. It took me 3+ hours to just get a label from their website for a special hardware I had to ship. Fun part is that after I signup and create and account and login, they want me to "Create an account", which I suppose it is their internal terminology for some kind of payment profile. Then they did not allow me to create that either demanding I call up their customer service.

neilv 3y ago
Similar here. I blew half an hour trying to schedule a Fedex pickup. Which left the 2 kinds of accounts on their site. Which recently they decided to start carpet-bombing with marketing emails. With unsubscribe links that led to runarounds, and no way to get to a place to opt-out in my account. Eventually got to somewhere they said I had to call their customer service to make them stop. At this point, I took the unprecedented step of adding an email rule to never see any email from that company again. Of course Fedex figured out logistics decades ago. But their consumer IT experience I've seen thus far is ridiculously bad, and has a vibe that they really don't care. (Contrast with Amazon's vibe: Bezos once cared, and that will take a long time for the company to completely unlearn, although lately they can coast and cash out on legacy goodwill and entrenchment.) Are businesses going to let Fedex operate any consumer-facing facet other than the package showing up on doorstep?
- Ographer 3y ago
  Same experience here, seems like a bit of Conway's Law. Their website is set up to mirror their own internal structure instead of a way that is actually customer friendly. My first thought of shopping on FedEx is how awful it would be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    It's a really bad case of Conway's Law if it doesn't only impact the design of the underlying system, but even impacts the UI

physhster 3y ago

FedEx can't get a package delivered on time... I have a really hard time seeing how a technologically outdated legacy corporation could compete with Amazon fulfillment and other 3PLs...

AwaAwa 3y ago
Either they will or they won't. Ultimately anything that provides competition to Amazon is good.

w0z_ 3y ago

This is an interesting problem. If FedEx's platform can't promise 1 or 2-day delivery, it will never take off. On the other end of the spectrum, Amazon promises 1-2 day delivery but has been falling through more often than first seen and can become a 2-4 day delivery. Amazon does seem to absolutely bleed their workforce to keep up, but also push more absolute junk through their platform now. Costco is in kind of a prime position to offer quality-tested products with 1-2 day delivery... but they just do not care to offer this "Prime" type of service. Costco is still quick, just not as quick, and their website / app is trash to use compared to Amazon. One honest competitor I see rising up - Home Depot. They are making incredible moves in this space (in terms of web/app UI/UX and expedited deliverable date).

next_xibalba 3y ago
> Amazon promises 1-2 day delivery but has been falling through more often than first seen and can become a 2-4 day delivery I’ve seen this claimed a few times lately here on HN but it hasn’t been my experience at all. Is there any data out there to support this claim?
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  It really depends where you live. My brother lives close to an Amazon distribution center and often gets orders same day. I quit Amazon years ago but my wife still uses it, seems like most things take 2-3 days.
- constGard 3y ago
  I doubt you'll find anything other than anecdotes, as only Amazon has the actual data in aggregate. They'll often promise me today or tomorrow and deliver 4-20 days later in some extreme cases.
- spike021 3y ago
  I live in the Bay Area in a pretty commonly known city. Frequently the product listing on Amazon says eligible for 2-day or 1-day Prime Delivery. Many times despite doing that it takes 3-4 days or longer.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

I feel like folks are hyper focused on the delivery side. That just seems super important to me. Just me, but there's like 2-3 times a year I want something fast. I bounce on and off Prime because it just doesn't matter to me. The real problems seem much deeper to me. Amazon's warehouses, their online store, their ability to handle disputes: that much deeper integration feels like the challenge FedEx faces.

lucasyvas 3y ago

Do you figure it's easier to become a shipping company or an ecommerce platform? I don't suspect they'll pull it off, but it's not the worst idea I've heard. Walmart always makes me think similar but not in the same way. Ultimately, the in-person retail experience still offers its own conveniences so that's a good feature.

themadturk 3y ago
Only if they have what you want in stock. I was shopping at my local Walmart Supercenter today and they had no black shoe polish. I can get it through their website, if I want to pay for shipping.

amingilani 3y ago

> enabling merchants to give estimated delivery dates to customers during shopping and ordering It’ll be a new era when FedEx can give accurate delivery estimates. Last time I recall paying for next day delivery and wondering how my package will traverse all of Canada in that time. I then watched the delivery estimate update to “tomorrow” every day for a week until it finally delivered.

Waterluvian 3y ago
I love when my package decides to head back to Alberta.
kristopolous 3y ago
"When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" - which night that is, is unspecified.
voakbasda 3y ago
Came here to report similarly. They cannot estimate package delivery times with any accuracy for my rural address. They virtually always gaslight us with false delivery dates. They are a running joke in our household. For a company that should have all of the data necessary for training a system to do a better job, their systems are a farce. I would love to hear the FedEx engineers defend this status quo.

amluto 3y ago

I’m glad it’s a “platform,” because FedEx appears institutionally incapable of making a usable website or mobile app. But maybe they can pull off a “platform.” :)

mingabunga 3y ago
You're absolutely right. Their website is terrible to book anything on or do any admin with, probably got many different antiquated systems in the background
djtango 3y ago
was looking for this comment. If their core website is anything to go by, I doubt they can run an ecommerce business. I've never felt more nervous about using an online service than when I had to internationally Fedex my passport to get it renewed. If Amazon offered such a postal service I'd use that in a heartbeat with full confidence.

zeroCalories 3y ago

Am I going schizophrenic, or are the last two paragraphs the same? Is the verge writing articles with AI now? Sounds cool though. Good luck to FedEx.

throwaway19091p 3y ago

I can't remember the last time FedEx actually correctly delivered a package to either my house, or my place of business. They have left expensive switches in the middle of parking lots at wrong buildings in the rain and marked it as delivered. Whenever I see that a company is using FedEx to deliver something to me, I lose all hope that it will actually arrive at the correct address, let alone arriving on time.

breitling 3y ago

I was am Amazon seller and absolutely hated it. It is seemingly all run by bots. They delisted my product and none of the humans knew why. It is a bot that decided that and no one could answer what the reason was. I welcome any competition that is more friendly to sellers.

lolinder 3y ago
It's all bots from the customer side too! AI-generated product names and descriptions with AI-generated reviews [0]. Half the books on there these days are AI-generated knockoffs of someone else's work. I think it's not just sellers who would welcome some competition in this space. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38971012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38971012
YeBanKo 3y ago
I almost stopped shopping at Amazon. There is very little reason left. It is filled with no-name crap by companies with auto generated names. I might as well buy it from Aliexpress or Temu, same crap but at a fraction of a cost and the latter is really aggressive about cheap shipping. For something more serious either buy directly from the brand, or from Costco, Target, Walmart, HomeDepot, BedBath&Beyond, BestBuy, Macy's, publisher's website, some specialized hardware, electronics or hobby shops. There is still a limited number of things where Amazon beats others, but their quality went down, and hassle free return is not hassle free anymore. On top of that, they exhibit highly unethical behavior when it comes to counterfeit books. Here is a good thread by François Chollet about his book: https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1550930876183166976 https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1550930876183166976. The main takeaway is this: Q: What is Amazon doing about it? A: Nothing. We've notified them multiple times, nothing happened. The fraudulent sellers have been in activity for years. The issue affects ~100% of Amazon sales of the book since March or April. That's because, amazingly, since fraudsters are claiming to have inventory, Amazon has stopped carrying its own inventory for the book (i.e. it has stopped ordering new copies from the publisher). This is mind blowing to me, that they are still in the business of selling books. And they did not really solve last mile delivery. Yeah, it is still faster, but I can wait for my sneakers for 5 days, instead of 2-3 and many retail chains can now delivery something to you in 3-5 biz days and can beat Amazon on return policy or warranty. It's odd that market forces aren't correcting this for Amazon.

fedexthrowaway 3y ago

I've known a fair amount of people that have worked at FedEx corporate, poached talent from there, etc. I sincerely don't think they are going to turn the ship with the technical culture they have in place. It's abysmal, dysfunctional, and weighed down with so much red tape. Many engineers are just a cog in some large machine. Communication seems absolutely draconian. Perhaps this is most companies that age and size but I simply would bet against any of their new technical endeavors without radical change in their organizational structures. I'd love to be proven wrong though. Healthy competition is a good thing.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

happytiger 3y ago

This is a mixed bag. It’s awesome to have competition. On the other hand this launch could blunt antitrust / monopoly efforts against Amazon.

collegeburner 3y ago
... because it could reduce amazon's marketshare and pricing power? which would reduce the supposed need for such efforts. is this just schadenfreude desire to see amazon get fucked in court?
- happytiger 3y ago
  Nope. Because it’s likely not going to be successful but would be, like Apple to Microsoft in the 90s, the small slice competitor that keeps government action from happening.

armini 3y ago

would have been smarter if they just partnered with Shopify. A lot of people are leaving amazon & setting up their own stores with Shopify.

voakbasda 3y ago
That’s sad. Trading one marketplace for another. What happened to independent e-commerce solutions that you can stand up in your own server room? Does no one run their own store anymore?

srmarm 3y ago

This is interesting. Putting aside AWS, Amazon has for a long time been a logistics company at it's core - the website is terrible from a customer perspective, pricing isn't great and the seller/supplier experience is certainly weighted in Amazon's favour. What they have is the critical mass of customers who are invested in prime and it's the default choice. I hate them but if I need something quick I generally hold my nose and ask my wife to order on her account. Other sellers can achieve delivery just as quick, it's just inconsistent between sites. As someone who builds ecommerce sites and has seen Amazon become dominant I've thought about how to solve this problem many times - it requires deep pockets and most importantly good logistics. I've often thought if a logistics company expanded their shopping cart plugins to also (optionally) feed back data to a central ordering system and included their own payment solution to allow direct from customer ordering with centralised ordering, payment and logistics - perhaps at a loss until a prime type offering could be built there would be a potential for a strong business. Amazon take a huge amount of fees a chunk of which go to putting the wrong product in front of the customer!

_puk 3y ago
Whilst Amazon has nailed logistics (especially last mile), it's real value is in reduced cognitive load. You know when you shop there that what you order will arrive quickly, no convoluted delivery charges, and a returns policy that shook the industry up completely
- subpixel 3y ago
  Agreed. In fact there are significant parts of the US where 1 or 2 day delivery is not available. But people who live there, like me, use Amazon often because it's the 'easy button'.

christkv 3y ago

They want to call the product fdx but don't seem to have secured the domain for it. Weird.

passedandfuture 3y ago

FedEx is a terrible delivery service. I refuse to use them. Maybe before attempting to rival Amazon, they should focus on improving their core operations first.