Fedex is not very good when it comes to claims. They have little incentive
to do so (nor do other carriers). Especially in the case of small customers.
Plus, federal law is on their side. Take a look at:

http://powerstandards.com/FedExVerdict/
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/26/BAGTBBV27C1.DTL

The California court of appeals, by their own words, "reluctantly" overturned
a $678,000 damages award against FedEx. The original award was $1.6M by a
jury. That was paired back by the judge in the case. An interesting read.

In my experiences, UPS has been much better to deal with in the case of claims.
FedEx has been more problematic.

As an aside, FedEx's web-site for shipments leaves much to be desired. For
example, ship a 12 oz letter overnight someplace. Yes. The letter envelope
has 12 oz of paper in it. You put in 1 lb on their site and ask for a 
rate quote.
It gives you a rate of roughly US$18. When the bill comes, they charge you
an extra US$9 because the letter is over 8 oz. So, it does not 
qualify as a letter.
It now becomes a 1 lb package. When you entered 1 lb letter, they should
quote correctly or at least ask.

You can ask for a rate quote for a 10 lb letter. It comes out the same as 8 oz
and 1 lb. When you try and actually ship a letter more than 1 lb, it complains
that you cannot do that. When the CEO's office was asked about this, they
said that is just the way it is. They do not see it as a problem.

UPS on the other hand, you can ship up to 4 lb in a letter envelope.

Bottom line, if you care about something being lost, insure it. If you really
care about it getting there without damage, take it there yourself (and be
careful while doing so ;-).

cheers,
eric

><x-charset iso-8859-1><Marcel Duchamp asks>
>>  Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried making a claim against Fedex for
>>  an *insured* package that got lost?
>
>Yes.  They conduct an investigation that seems to take a month.  Payment is
>to the shipper for the value of the item or the amount of insurance
>purchased, whichever is less.  FedEx is the sole judge of what the item is
>worth.  In one case, they argued that a hand made prototype should be valued
>at the average cost of an equivalent production product -- I haven't a clue
>what that means.  Fortunately we had spare boards and FedEx agreed to
>reimburse for the technician's time to wire up a new board.
>
>In each case the adjuster (Washington DC, USA) was pretty reasonable; but,
>you will get nothing for a pissed off client, missed deadline, or even a
>contract penalty caused by FedEx's loss/damage/delay.  In one case, we
>couldn't even get a letter saying that FedEx was the reason why the package
>didn't arrive.
>
>Our problem is with the uncertainty that the stuff will get delivered in a
>timely fashion.
>
>Aza D. Oberman
>
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></x-charset>


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