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FedEx may have the worst and least secure digital platform for a major company. Some examples I’ve noticed: 1. I moved into a 10-unit apartment building and wa

• eropple 3y ago
  UPS is up there, too. I still get text messages about an old address on an account I can't log into for...reasons. (Special characters sound plausible! And of course the password reset flow doesn't work.) Wonder if they share a vendor.
  • judge2020 3y ago
    UPS is better in my experience with them always requiring a code sent to me via USPS to verify access to UPS My Choice, except for when I signed up with a new construction address - It also seems to only show me packages with my last name on it, packages with just a company name did not show up.
  • ryandrake 3y ago
    I can’t believe it’s 2024 and we are still seeing bugs with handling “special” characters. Unicode has been here for how long? Robust string handling is supported in every language. There is no such thing as a special character. My name should be able to contain Chinese characters. My password should be able to contain emojis. What is this Stone Age shit still running on companies’ backends?
    • gjsman-1000 3y ago
      Most companies don't like rewriting their code. If it ain't broke, don't fix. (Weird password issues don't count as broke.) There's no guarantee, after all, that the rewrite won't have major edge cases and mistakes of it's own. The upper layer might change now and then, to give a veneer of modernity. But just like Windows being built on 90s technology, the stuff underneath could be even more ancient.
      • ryandrake 3y ago
        A software that can't accept a % as part of your password is absolutely, positively broken--in any industry or application. In many companies, this would be a P0 "don't go home until it's fixed" production emergency if a bug like this crept in to the software. We need to stop excusing long-standing bugs in horrible legacy software just because they are long-standing.
        • gjsman-1000 3y ago
          > In many companies, this would be a P0 "don't go home until it's fixed" production emergency if a bug like this crept in to the software. Would it, really? P0 would probably be "10% of our customers can't submit an order." Or "20% of our vendors are experiencing 404s."
          • ryandrake 3y ago
            If 10% of customers have passwords that now can't log in and submit orders, that would be an emergency. We're taking OP's word for it that FedEx doesn't allow certain characters as passwords (actually, from the description, it seems more like FedEx only allows specific characters which is even worse). If either of those are true, it is most certainly a defect. Whether FedEx treats that defect as an emergency is up to them I guess. I'm saying many modern companies would. You originally said "Weird password issues don't count as broke." I think this might just be a case where we have to "agree to disagree".
            • 3y ago
• orangevelcro 3y ago
  I wonder if that's why I can't change my password with petco - every time I shop there they tell me I have rewards but I can't load them because the site errors out when I try to reset my password. I used to be able to load the rewards to my account without logging in at all, just clicked the link in my email, but I guess they fixed that and then I realized I didn't know my password.
• nonameiguess 3y ago
  I'd put Spectrum up against them. A few years back, an incoming neighbor typoed their address in a new account setup request to my address and Spectrum very helpfully inferred that the previous resident would want their account terminated and they turned off my service. Apparently, you can DOS any person on the planet you want from the entire Internet by simply knowing their address.
  • sidewndr46 3y ago
    I once moved into a duplex and Spectrum's precursor told me I already had service. After 8 hours on the phone I talked to someone in customer service who told me "I know the problem you have, I know how to fix it. I can 100% fix it. You are welcome to stay on the phone, but it will take more than 6 hours for me to create an account for you". So in the end it took days to open a new account. When I moved they someone opened a second account in my name and kept billing me for the original account.
• genman 3y ago
  Maybe, but UPS is close to it. They for example are sending out emails that request users to log into their account to "avoid losing their profile". If this is not ripe for phishing then I don't know what will be.
• n0us 3y ago
  Is it impressive though? They have about a 50% success rate delivering things to me across multiple addresses and I know other people who have had similar long term issues.
  • kragen 3y ago
    "50% success rate delivering packages" is a totally different level of risk from "automated system gives your garage access code to anyone who claims to live there" i mean in the first case what's at risk is the five-dollar trinket you bought off amazon
    • DragonMaus 3y ago
      Or the irreplacable trinket that your aging grandmother sent you.
      • kragen 3y ago
        hopefully you'd opt for a more reliable shipping service for important packages
  • throwway120385 3y ago
    At one of my addresses FedEx will happily sell anyone overnight shipping and then just keep the parcel at the depot for a week until they have a driver who can actually make the trip. I have had like 6 very urgent packages delayed like this. Once my wife ordered something perishable and they pulled this then told her she had to drive into town and pick it up at the airport. I've also been nearly run off the road by FedEx drivers on the highway before. One guy was so angry that I was only going 10 over that he tailgated me within a foot and then punish passed me. They're also the only service that still corrects my other address to the wrong address. I tried for a whole month to get ahold of anyone there who even knows what address correction is and then just stopped using them for anything important. They doubled down on "digital" during the pandemic and fired a bunch of CSRs and stuff. It doesn't look like it's working out very well for them.
• TuringNYC 3y ago
  My favorite was when they put my well-marked mail-order medicine right at the exit of the roof gutter pipe, instead of the front door. Sometimes it feels like the workers want to purposely cause chaos.
  • callalex 3y ago
    One part workers, 3 parts horrible management setting impossible metrics and bad incentives.
• toss1 3y ago
  Re password reset workflow issues: I had an account at a bank where password reset always failed. I had to go through a VERY convoluted process with customer website support to get it fixed. It turned out that the problem was that my registered email address was just two characters (my initials) to the left of the "@", e.g., ab@mydomain.com. They allowed me to enter and use it throughout the system without any error flagging whatsoever, but it completely broke the password system. They claim to have raised it as a bug, but never fixed in 3 years+ (moving away from them now).
  • robocat 3y ago
    After 50 years of software crud, eventually a civilisation ending bug occurs and it can't be fixed (like how Telstra couldn't fix their phone system because the phone system was down). That's why we are all alone in the universe. Enjoy life while civilisation still works!
  • filoleg 3y ago
    This comment just unlocked a new fear of mine. I specifically got a custom domain and email address for any non-personal/"professional" comms, which is essentially just me@<custom-domain-featuring-my-name>.com. At least with non-ASCII characters in passwords, while I think it is stupid to not handle those properly, I can at least see some sort of an excuse there, no matter how weak it is. All it takes to mess this up is not thinking about handling those scenarios, so I can definitely see "this issue was created due to us not thinking about this possibility or not willing to deal with handling it." But what's even the reason to not allow sub-3-character local portions of emails? How does one even mess those up, aside from intentionally setting some triggers for less than 3 characters in local portions of email addresses?
    • JoshTriplett 3y ago
      > But what's even the reason to not allow sub-3-character local portions of emails? How does one even mess those up, aside from intentionally setting some triggers for less than 3 characters in local portions of email addresses? Wild guess: someone copy-pasted an incorrect email address validation regex, and different parts of the system are using different criteria for email address validation.
• delfinom 3y ago
  It's fine. At least they don't automatically lowercase and truncate your password behind the scenes like AMEX. Lol.
• bastardoperator 3y ago
  I ordered a computer from Southern California, they shipped it to Texas, Florida, Maine, and then back to Northern California. My last two orders were just stolen from someone at FedEx. They got the shipment, but it never left the facility after that. Customer service is an offshore apology machine that can't help with anything. I used to prefer fedex, but the standard of service is so subpar I go out of my way to avoid them.
  • zamalek 3y ago
    I assume you know that you can open a claim? They'll either find your package really fast, or will have to pay its full value. Often the vendor has to initiate the claim. If the vendor doesn't want to open a claim, refund. If the vendor doesn't want to refund, chargeback.
    • bastardoperator 3y ago
      My last two stolen packages required the vendor to open a claim, I did in both cases and both vendors refunded me. Fedex wouldn't even entertain trying to help me.
      • jcotton42 3y ago
        I had this with an Apple Watch return. The package was either lost or stolen in transit, and neither FedEx nor Apple were interested in helping me. Only got it resolved after emailing Tim Cook's address, which goes to executive customer relations.
    • deedub 3y ago
      Be careful about those chargebacks. I bought two new pixel phones directly from Google and only one arrived. Google support was of course awful and Fedex did absolutely nothing outside of asking me what color the phone was. lol I ended up reversing charges for the missing phone and Google immediately wrecked me - I was using Fi at the time so they killed my cell service and killed my ability to use Google Pay for anything - including the Play Store. Probably some other stuff I don't even remember. Between my personal account and my business accounts I realized at that moment that Google could completely wreck my life. Be careful about retaliation for a chargeback, if you live within one company's ecosystem it can be a brutal retaliation you're not ready for.
• bsimpson 3y ago
  You're reminding me of the time I realized that Schwab (a massive American bank/broker) truncated all passwords to 8 characters.
  • Enginerrrd 3y ago
    Bonus points are given when they handle truncating your password differently in the initial validation vs authentication and it fails silently!
    • int_19h 3y ago
      Or, even more hilariously, that said truncation happens on the client, and varies between different clients that they have. I personally ran into this with Wells Fargo, where their mobile app would leave one more (or one less, I don't remember exactly now) character than their website.
  • S201 3y ago
    Heh, that's the same company that sends physical mail to me every time I make a trade because they believe that email sent to my personal domain is "undeliverable" and automatically opt me out of e-statements no matter how many times I opt-back in. They have to be losing money on me by paying for so much postage at this point. (And no, nothing is wrong with my email, it's hosted by a professional email host with the proper MX records and literally only Schwab claims to have this problem with me).
    • bsimpson 3y ago
      My college had a credit union with an ATM in the cafeteria. It was in your interest to keep enough money in the credit union to pay for lunch etc. while you were a student there. When I graduated, I pulled the money back out. Apparently they issued the final interest payment after I'd emptied the account. For at least a year after that, I got monthly statements informing me that I had an account with less money in it than the postage on the statement.
      • 3y ago
• sidewndr46 3y ago
  I've had FedEx hand packages to other couriers who promptly lost them never to be seen again. When I contact them they said this counts as delivering the package. I no longer use FedEx for any shipment that I need to have arrive.
• pishpash 3y ago
  Much worse than that. I wanted to get some free shipping supplies from FedEx, so I had to sign up for a shipping account. Account could not be created due to password issues on the website, forgot how I got around it but maybe had to use the mobile app which used a different flow. After getting the account, immediately I get shipping bills for international shipping in the thousands of dollars, both sender and recipient have nothing to do with me. Credit card on file was auto-charged. Removed credit card, started getting thick FedEx bills in physical mail. It turns out FedEx allows billing to be charged to any account as long as you have their nine-digit account number, so of course scammers do this all the time just generating random numbers. FedEx didn't give a shit, denied my reporting of fraud, allowed more scam shipping even after I reported. Finally I had to initiate chargeback via the credit card issuer and only then did they close the account. But I still get marketing emails that I can no longer turn off. Absolutely not a company anyone should use.
  • sidewndr46 3y ago
    They ask for an ID whenever you use an account number. I have to FedEx stuff to my home address for work. The guy at the counter is always perplexed when I tell him the destination address is the same one as the one on my ID.
    • pishpash 3y ago
      Maybe if you do it in person, but they must have direct shipping flows where nobody checks.
      • sidewndr46 3y ago
        oh wow, that is incredibly dumb.
• jd3 3y ago
  I bought an OP-1 from teenage engineering years ago and fedex delivered it inside of the mailbox. USPS removed the fedex package from the mailbox and impounded it at our local USPS post office without ever notifying me. After 1-2 months of waiting/assuming the package had been stolen, I call the USPS office and asked if they somehow had the package in their custody/possession and, lo-and-behold, they did (in the "undeliverable mail room") and started lecturing me about how it was illegal for fedex to deliver a package into the mailbox, which is usps/government property etc. etc. I called Fedex to try to rectify this and, as far as I remember, they either never answered the phone or told me they had no way of contacting the delivery driver (??). I've always avoided fedex (and UPS, for that matter, since they destroyed two antique lamps that I ordered through ebay) since then.
  • denkmoon 3y ago
    The mailbox? On your property? that you paid for an installed (or bought off the previous owner), is government/usps property and they'll steal a parcel that someone else has delivered to it? That's insane lmao
    • quatrefoil 3y ago
      USPS owns and maintains some cluster mailboxes at apartment complexes and HOAs.
      • zten 3y ago
        No, it goes further than that, all the way back to 1934. USPS is the only authorized service to use a mailbox. Here is an altogether far too detailed study of the law: https://www.gao.gov/assets/ggd-97-85.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/ggd-97-85.pdf You need separate bins/boxes/whatever for other services to use.
• the__alchemist 3y ago
  Of the carriers, FedEx is the worst for me (North Carolina, USA). DHL is the fastest and most reliable. UPS and USPS tie for second place, slightly below. (People I talk to in person hate USPS, but I've had consistently good experiences with them for both sending, and receiving). Then FedEx several rungs below; Out for delivery, then rescheduled every time.
• bitfilped 3y ago
  I wasn't very impressed when they tossed my new 100G network switch under the water runoff spout on my porch during a snow melt day.
• hypercube33 3y ago
  Up until a few years (well, it feels like it) ago wells Fargo had a case insensitive password for accounts. I didn't believe it since my password was upper and lower case and special characters but I tried one day and sure enough got right in.
• DANmode 3y ago
  If you give instructions to a delivery guy, they are not secure anymore.
• qingcharles 3y ago
  They're an amateur company. They claimed three times to have tried to deliver a package to me last year even though they never even came down my street one time. The package got returned to the sender who wouldn't respond. When I quibbled with my credit card company (Cash App) they said the package had been delivered to the sender, so it was technically "delivered" and I was not eligible for a refund. When I persisted they permanently terminated my account with them so I can never have another Cash App account, thanks to FedEx.