FedEx not what it's cracked up to be

[Bongo]

So yesterday we had our robot crated and ready to be shipped when we got a call from FedEx saying that they wouldn't be able to pick our robot up until thursday. Well, that was about the worst thing that we weren't prepared to hear. We have been trying to contact FIRST Headquarters or anyone that might help us. Basically we aren't even sure if we can go. So our robot is just sitting there in the shop all crated up...

[eshteyn]

Make sure you have proof that you called in to FedEx and they said that, because then you can show this evidence to the regional administration and that will greatly help your chances of competing.

[Chris_Elston]

I can't tell you for sure what you can do this year, but here is something you can do NEXT year.

Find a local drayage (warehouse) or third party person in your local town that has a dock and is willing to store your crate for you. Next year, drop your crate off at this local warehouse then get that local warehouse to give you on company letter head that you delivered the crate to them and it's out of your teams hands by the FIRST deadline, then schedule your FEDEX pickup at that local drayage or warehouse. Then if something like this happens again you have proof to FIRST that you dropped your crate and it was out of your hands by the deadline. You just need to mail your letter from that local warehouse to FIRST as per the rules say. If FedEX is late coming to the warehouse to pickup your crate, it shouldn't matter because you've done your part by getting rid of the crate to someone else and have written proof that it was delivered.

For now, if you have a dock shipping department that has been holding the crate for you waiting for FedEX, you might be able to get them to vouch that the crate has been out of your hands and provide a letter head that you now have 4 days to get and mailed to FIRST. Don't waste time, 4 days is ticking. Dunno if that helps or not, but don't rely on FedEx because sometimes weather can be a problem for them to come and get your crate.

The local drayage thing is explained in the rules as well.

4.8.3 in the Robot Transportation

4.8.6 address to snail mail letter to FIRST. Make sure it's the original ink signed copy. Make a copy for yourself and use a trackable service such as fedex or UPS.

[Warren Boudreau]

FedEx had told us the same thing. We are in an "Extended Pickup Area" and they couldn't guarantee that the robot would be picked up on Tuesday. But, it got picked up anyway.

I am pretty sure that FIRST will not penalize you as long as you did everything within your control.

1). Printed the airbill less than 3 days in advance.
2). Called FedEx 24 hours in advance to set up the pickup.
3). Crated the robot before the deadline.
4). Don't open the crate until you see it at your first regional.

Good luck.

[GIR]

I'm curious to hear what FIRST's response was to that challenge! I'm sure others are as well...

[Joe Troy]

I understand your concern and I would be in a panic if FedEx called me to say they could'nt pick-up our crate by the shipping dealine, however, to title your post as "FedEx not what it's cracked up to be" is far from fair or accurate.

I have been involved with FIRST prior to the days of donated FedEx shipping and I can tell you that FedEx has been a welcome addition to the FIRST family. FedEx is a huge supporter of FRC and provides thousands of flawless FRC shipments each year. I would never want to see FedEx disassociate themselves from FIRST.

I sincerely hope that your team is able to compete and that you will find shipping via FedEx to be the valuable resource that it has been for FRC teams.

Good luck in 2007!!

[RoboMom]

FedEx supplies hundreds of thousands of donated dollars to FIRST teams. It sure beats paying for this.

If you haven't already, have your main, alternate or shipping contact (not one of the students) call FRC teams at 1-800-871-8326 "0" and explain the situation. They will advise.

[SirLancelot]

We had a problem as well, actually--we received an email around 6pm yesterday to the effect that the crated robot was still sitting at shipping and receiving at the high school. There had been some confusion and FedEx hadn't picked it up. If I may suggest: teams need to make sure they specify a pickup time and location and have it all in writing. We ended up lugging our 300-400 pound crate into a trailer and taking it to the FedEx post at the Detroit airport. NOT a good way to spend ship date...
Anna

[T3_1565]

We didn't even end up getting Fedex to pick ours up. We called them before-hand and they informed us that there was only one truck that would be in our area, and it was in a different city that day. Thankfully Our sponser went ahead with this info and got us another shipping company to go with

[Doug G]

FedEx picked up our crate at our school, right at the end of the day. Just enough to make me sweat. The driver was real nice and remembered us last year and knows about the program and the donation by FedEx. Because Monday was a holiday and they were swamped with work, HE WAS TOLD BY HIS BOSS TO PICK UP PAID SHIPMENTS FIRST. Luckily he said that he had just enough time to still get our crate. When I asked him about the procedure for postponing a pickup (if it happens) - he said we'd be issued special notification about a delayed pickup and that we could use that to prove to FIRST that it is not our fault. This is not official by any means but having some proof that you tried to get FedEx to pickup on the due date should suffice.

[kmcclary]

We too almost had a disaster.

We followed the instructions in the manual, which stated:

Originally Posted by FIRST Manual, Sec 4 PG 13

"If you are using the donated FedEx shipments, FedEx Express Frieght Service, the drayage facility will call FedEx for pickup. Put the proper paperwork/airbill on your crate."

As expected, we went to the FedEx Express site three days in advance, and scheduled an "it'll be ready by 3:30PM" pickup. The website gave us a set of printed airbills. We put them on the packed crate, and set it out on Tuesday.

Well, at close to 6PM, no pickup! One of our mentors called FedEx. They said, "There's nothing scheduled" WE said "we did the website thing, specified a 3:30PM pickup, and the website CONFIRMED it..." They said the problem was "you didn't receive a pickup number, so it wasn't really scheduled, regardless of what the website said". (What???)

LESSON: Apparently, scheduling a pickup time, and printing the airbill is --insufficient--. This does NOT generate a "pickup request". That's a SEPARATE ACTION.

Post Motem: We determined that "STEP 9" on the USFIRST FedEx donation document was the problem. If you don't EXPLICITLY specify "schedule a pickup" in a specific field, it DEFALUTS to "Will contact FedEx to Request a Pickup [separately]. (There's an additional location on the last page to also request a pickup", but it did NOT say anywhere that "You have a time, but by your choices you still need to make another call to schedule the physical pickup".)

What confused us is that we DID receive a confirmation that the paperwork was filled out correctly! It stated "It is scheduled to ship on 2/20" (and gave us a tracking number). HOWEVER, apparently its assumption that "you will call" is a perfectly legitimate exit (as well as "it is scheduled for you"). This statement CAN IMPLY that the separate scheduling action was done!

Bottom line: (1) The above manual statement is confusing. It does NOT imply THEY will schedule the pickup. YOU still have to do it. (2) Printing Airbills and Schedule Pickup are SEPARATE actions. (3) Don't only trust the website's output. In the future, after performing a web action it's always a good idea to VERIFY with a --call-- to FedEx that the pickup itself is IN their system correctly. (4) If you wait until ship day to verify pickup scheduling, you may be in trouble, and have to perform "extreme actions" to make the deadline.

A huge Thank You goes to Mike Kizer, our mentor with the trailer. He happened to notice the crate was still at the school at 6PM that night. He quickly fetched his flatbed trailer, assembled a student crew to move it to his trailer, and personally drove the crate out to the Metro Airport to make the deadline.

BTW... We were VERY lucky. Detroit Metro Airport's FedEx Depot (50 miles away from Chelsea!) was the only office in this part of the state that was still open. Mike arrived there with the crate at about 8:45PM, less than 20 minutes before they closed!

It did ship on time, but it could have been a disaster without some quick action by our team! <whew>

- Keith McClary
Chief Engineer, Team 1502 "Technical Difficulties"

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by kmcclary

We too almost had a disaster.

We followed the instructions in the manual, which stated:

...The above manual statement is confusing. It does NOT imply THEY will schedule the pickup. YOU still have to do it...

I had to read through this several times before I finally saw how you were confused. It was immediately perfectly clear to me that the manual is talking about shipping from a regional. The drayage facility can't arrange for the pickup if it doesn't actually have possession of your crate and the associated paperwork.

[Ricky Q.]

These confusions just show that FIRST needs to find a better way to get the word out or people need to pay more attention to FIRST emails (or a combination of both).

This document http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/Community/FRC/FRC_Documents_and_Updates/Regional%20Shipment%20Instructions.pdf goes through exactly what needs to be done (minus the issues that were had with Firefox and pop up blocking).

On page 10 it states "* Select “Will contact FedEx” Please note that
you will need to call FedEx at 1-800-332-0807 and ask for Express Freight to schedule your pickup. If your pickup location does not have a loading dock please make sure FedEx brings a truck with a lift gate. Please call the day of or no more than one (1) day in advance."

Robot shipping is complicated and can be a hassle if things are not clear.

[kmcclary]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

I had to read through this several times before I finally saw how you were confused. It was immediately perfectly clear to me that the manual is talking about shipping from a regional. The drayage facility can't arrange for the pickup if it doesn't actually have possession of your crate and the associated paperwork.

Yes. It probably should have said something like "once at a regional, the drayage facility will call FedEx for pickup from that tegional to the next, to automatically pass the crate on to the next drayage facility."

For some reason, the original sentence as worded implied to our shipping person that they meant something to the effect of: "once entered into the system, the drayage facility will call FedEx for pickup from our home to their drayage company's location." IOW, they're fetching the crate to them, because this was a special donation. She assumed that by entering it into the web form, the system itself was designed to automatically communicate the data to get the drayage firm involved, and they would take it from there.

In reality though, the thing that actually lulled our shipping person into a false sense of security was the fact that we DID enter a "3:30 pickup" into the form, and got a CONFIRMATION of it along with our airbills. NOT ONCE did the website issue a warning message that this was ONLY a "scheduled time" and that we still had to make a separate call (or yet another website action) to arrange for the PHYSICAL pickup by a truck.

The fact that this is a separate act is what caught us off guard. That's VERY confusing web system design. Now FYI, I've designed interactive forms before. There's absolutely no reason that I can see where once you have designed a web form to request a pickup time from the user that it should ever need another action to initiate that physical pickup. (Silly programmers...)

IMHO, a properly designed web form SHOULD schedule that action for you within itself (or at least WARN you you need to do more if it isn't going to act). After all, (one would hope that) it should be one large, interlocked data management and scheduling system, and not still multiple, independent systems (airbills vs truck operations, etc).

Note that I am NOT faulting the FedEx system per se. I think FedEx is doing us a wonderful service by donating shipping. IMO, it's the combination of the webform and the FIRST manual instructions that left us with a false sense of security. We thought we did everything right, and we were almost out of the contest for it.

IMO, reviewing the shipping doc section might be in order, to make a less ambiguous set of instructions for how to navigate the FedEx system.

Heck... Just adding one "final step" to the docs outlining some INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION method to verify that everything IS scheduled correctly would probably fix the whole thing.

Thanks.

- Keith McClary
Chief Engineer, Team 1502 "Technical Difficulties"

[ben_0614]

It would be cool if UPS and FedEx competed with each other to deliver robots...