A reader called Margaret has had a pretty trying time dealing with FedEx over the last six months or so.
It all started in early November when she bought some products off Amazon.co.uk at a cost of €108.50 with €16.29 extra for post and packaging.
She says FedEx was recorded as having her parcel on November 10th and then on November 14th she got an “out for delivery” notification from FedEx Express Ireland. She got the same notification three days later but still no parcel arrived.
On November 14th, she had “raised the case with FedEx as the parcel was shown to be in Kilkenny and I live in County Waterford and I needed to expedite delivery urgently”.
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She says she paid FedEx a “requested ‘reimbursement fee’ of €34.60, even though I had been advised by seller not to do so, as I thought non-payment of same might be a factor contributing to delay in delivery. This was paid to FedEx on November 16th, by which time I had still not received the parcel. By November 18th the parcel had still not been delivered and on eventually getting to talk to a FedEx agent she informed me in a follow-up email that my package had been ‘recalled for customs examination’ and that she would ‘chase this up’ with customs.”
More time passed and she told FedEx that the contents of the parcel were no longer of any use as the “event for which they were required had begun and the parcel would have to be returned to sender. I also informed them that I would be requesting a refund of all monies paid by me to them.”
On November 20th she noticed that her parcel was in a FedEx hub in Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris “and I reiterated my request to FedEx, via email, to stop the shipment and return to sender and issue me with fee refund”.
Margaret says the FedEx agent assured her that she would process this with the invoicing team.
At the end of November the reimbursement fee she had paid was refunded to her PayPal account so she “assumed the goods had been returned to sender as Amazon had also refunded me all monies paid to them”.
She got an invoice from FedEx on December 3rd that “confirmed that I owed them nothing”.
That wasn’t to be the end of the story.
On January 22nd, she was told of an “overdue amount unpaid’ of €24.76, followed up by another demand threatening debt collection and legal action – all of which I ignored on the basis of my previous assurance and evidence that I owed FedEx nothing”.
Then, on April 7th, she got an invoice from the FedEx Control Account “demanding €69.76 for outstanding billable charges on behalf of FedEx Express Ireland Ltd”.
She says she was told “the only way they can stop the process is if I pay the original amount due (this was deemed to be a concession) and reclaim it myself from Customs. The FedEx agent in the billing department could offer me no help at all other than apologising for the invoice from FedEx stating that I owed nothing – seemingly this was sent in error. In addition she stated that Control Account fee was a processing charge i.e. nothing to do with FedEx. Amazingly, the original amount invoiced by FedEx, €24.76, was exactly what the Control Account extracted from me this morning to get them off my back. I must reclaim this from Customs it seems?
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“FedEx could offer no compensation for the stress this whole situation has caused me or indeed for the blemish on my character and credit worthiness due to their misinformation and subsequent referral of my case to a debt collection agency.”
We contacted FedEx and hours later the issues our reader had been dealing with for months were suddenly resolved.
“We’re aware of the issue and understand the concern it may have caused,” a spokeswoman said. “Having reviewed the situation, we identified an error in our process and have taken steps to address it. We’ve been in direct contact with the customer to apologise, explain what happened, and work towards a resolution. We’re also reviewing our processes to ensure this does not happen again. We take matters like this seriously and regret any inconvenience caused.”
