Small anecdote from Xmas 2020. My then company, e-commerce firm, was all FedEx. Sent out shipments around Black Friday by the literal trailer load. FedEx, due to their capacity issues or whatever, took a trailer from our warehouse to their parking lot or whatever and had it sitting for about a week there untouched, before ever scanning the packages or manifest into their system. So we had thousands of customers angrily calling us wondering why “FedEx is awaiting this package,” assuming we were lying to them that we shipped it days ago. Needless to say we signed with UPS after that, and they never pulled anything that egregious.
I had a similar experience when I bought a Steam Deck recently, manifesting as the courier tracking page denying all knowledge of the package even existing right up until the morning of delivery, when I got a text message saying it would be arriving in the next two hours. I spent the best part of a week nervously checking the tracking page absolutely convinced that my £600 device had been lost in the post somewhere, while being told by Valve support that I needed to wait at least a week before they'd even think about investigating.
I don’t know about other countries, but in Poland FedEx is disastrous when it comes to delivering packages. And it’s not so much their last mile couriers, but anything related to the delivery process itself - as if they had extremely broken IT infrastructure, systems and processes.
I remember getting five packages through them from US in a short timespan and every single time something else was broken in their support. One time they even forgot to take duties payment from me and asked only when I was getting the next package.
My theory was that FedEx prioritises comfort/pricing fir shipping companies which are unaware of how bad is it for the receivers.
If anyone ships to Poland (Europe?), I beg you - use literally anything else. My friends’ experience has been similar
I kind of suspect non-domestic carriers generally suck, no matter what. DHL (to the limited and seemingly decreasing extent they exist at all) are absolutely horrendous here in the US, for instance.
I had FedEx send me to collections for duties on a parcel marked to not deliver without collecting duties, for which the delivery guy signed a receipt.