First off, sorry I haven’t posted anything on this blog in months… I really haven’t had a whole ton to write about, but I see that changing in the near future. 

I have a little story to tell about how just the way a company can handle a mishap can make your relationship with that company 10 times better. Some of you may know that I like to lift weights. I got into weight lifting over the summer and have really just stuck with it ever since. As every good bodybuilder knows, you need some protein supplements to build good muscle. Well anyway, I needed some more protein so I ordered some protein and creatine off bodybuilding.com. I had ordered it last Friday and was enthusiastic to learn via my tracking number that it was scheduled for delivery on Tuesday. So Tuesday rolls around and I get home from school and look on my front porch… nothing’s there. I figure oh well, it’ll probably come in a few hours and I head back out to go to track practice. So about 6:15 I get home from track practice and look on my front porch again, and still, same result… nothing’s there.

So now I’m at the point in the story where things can really go downhill quick. I’ve never had a package stolen from me, so I’m a bit disconcerted as to what to do. I decide to give bodybuilding.com a call and explain my situation to them. An actual person answered quickly at bodybuilding and assured me that everything was going to be okay and that they would call the shipping company and go from there. 

Now, the customer service was great and all at bodybuilding.com, and I was impressed, but what really made me happy was the customer service from FedEx. About an hour after I called BB, I was out getting some food when my phone rang. It was an unrecognized number, but I figured I’d go ahead and answer anyway since I thought it might be bodybuilding. To my surprise however, it was FedEx. I honestly would have never expected a corporation this large to contact me personally in order to help get this straightened out. After all, I’m just one guy, right? So I explain to him my story and he says he’ll contact the driver and see what he thinks. The next morning at about 8:45 as I’m getting ready for school, I receive another telephone call, this time again from FedEx. I again explain my situation and the man on the other end says that the driver believes he just delivered it to the wrong house. Hoping he’s right, I’m already reassured as I had just received a new tracking number from BB for my reshipped order. Anyway, later that day at about 3:45 I hear someone knock on the door, and to my delight, it’s the FedEx man, there with my package! He had sincerely apologized to me about the mishap, but I explained how it was okay and that FedEx had treated me well. 

So what exactly is the moral of the story here? What did we learn? Well, FedEx screwed up. They delivered my package to the wrong house. I could have been very easily turned away from ever using FedEx again, but in fact, I think the exact opposite might occur. You see, nobody ever wants to have a packaged mis-delivered or stolen, but the facts of life are that some things like that happen. FedEx or BB could have easily just said "Sorry, your loss", but they didn’t. From the very beginning, both companies let me know that they cared. Even though I hadn’t placed a big order - my order total was sub $40. Now from FedEx’s point of view, they never want this kind of thing to happen. So will I ever ship with FedEx again? Absolutely. Yeah, UPS might have handled the situation the same way, but now I know exactly what I’m getting with FedEx. Customer service on the personal, real, person-to-person level, something often missed with large companies.