--- John Lawson <jpl15(a)panix.com> wrote:
OTOH, I have a FedEx Ground account. It's free,
and I just put in the
particulars of whats going where - the system prints
out a barcoded label,
and I'm good to go. I have to take the box(es) to
the FedEx folk, since
one of the reasons Ground is cheap is that they
don't provide pick-up
service - but since FedEx locations are easy to
find, this has not been a
problem for me. My account charges my credit card
directly for the
shipping costs, and, since eveything's pre-labelled,
the Stuff goes right
on the conveyor and that's that.
Oh, I had one of those lovely FedEx accounts, great
until one day I open my monthly statement and it looks
like this
$23.42
$18.23
$42.98
$42.98
$32.45
$32.45
$7.80
$7.80
get the picture? For some reason Fedex decided to
start double charging each of my shipments, so a phone
call to Fedex and half an hour later I get them
removed, no problem.
Next month the same thing happens, FedEx ramdomly
double charging some shipments, so I call again and
this time I get some moron on the phone who doesn't
know how to log in to account system, he forwards me
to some head account manager who instantly accuses me
of not wanting to pay my bills! She said "See the
statement, thats what you are supposed to pay, don't
you understand the concept of an invoice?"
It got worse after that, but safe to say, that card is
gone and I am back to old manual "pay at the counter"
way of shipping via USP and USPS.
On another related issue, how many people here use
services like stamps.com? I looked into them, but
there is always a catch, they don't work well with
international shipments (20% of my shipping) or if
they do you still have to bring the item to the USPS
counter because of the customs forms (instead of
leaving it at your curbside postal box for pickup like
you can with domestic shipments).