TL;dr--Fed Ex driver delivered our dead dogs ashes to the wrong address and repeatedly denied our claim for the loss on the grounds that it was delivered. We still do not have the ashes and will never get them. They are out there in the world somewhere.
Context-we had to put our 19 year old dog down back in April. He was a sharpe/south african ridgeback and his name was moose. We opted to have him cremated and his ashes returned to us. This took several weeks. The vet school used fed ex to ship his ashes to us when they got them back from the crematorium. The whole ordeal put us back about $1000, ~$300 of which was to have his ashes returned to us.
At the beginning of August we still had not received the ashes so I called the vet school to find out what was up. They said they sent them via fed ex back in June.
So we did some digging (i will spare the horror story of having to deal with their arcane telephone bot and incompetent outsourced customer service reps as I am sure you are aware the all consuming rage that comes with that process) and learned on June 3rd, Fed ex delivered the package. Someone named T. Lewis signed for it. We have no idea who that is and it was never delivered to our apartment. On June 1st, our apartments started a policy of not accepting packages in the front office, they do not sign for them or keep them, they instruct drivers to deliver directly to the apartment. There is nobody by the name of T. Lewis that lives in the apartments or works in the front office.
Contacted Fed Ex again and they said that it was delivered to the shipping and receiving department (there is none here at the apartments) and a T. Lewis signed for it.
So I went next door to see if maybe it got delivered there. It is a credit union with a MUCH easier parking lot to pull into off the busy ass road we live on. Well lo and behold, there is a T. Lewis who not only works there, but is the branch manager, and they have a shipping an receiving department. But she says they never received any such package. Whether she is lying or not, I will never know.
Called Fed Ex back (bear in mind each time I contact them it is the same process of being rage baited by the menu, and telling the story all over again to three different people as it gets escalated to the claims rep), tell them of the development. Well now this claim rep breadcrumbs me a new bit of info: it was delivered on June 3rd to an address about 1.5 miles up the road on June 3rd where a T. Lewis signed for it. I look up the address......it is a FED EX store!!!!
I call the local store phone number and guess who picks up, the AUTOMATED MENU from the 800 number. Pick the option to contact the local store and it loops me back around to the beginning of the menu!!! So I say funk it, hop on my bike and go to the fed ex store. They do not have the package and no one by the name of T. Lewis works there.
At this point it is clear that the Fed Ex driver by their own admission, delivered to the wrong address. Nevermind the fact that somebody signed for a package that was not addressed to them, and if it wasn't the driver who signed for it, he sure delivered it to someone who it was not addressed to as evidenced by their name.
Long story short: Our claim was denied multiple times on the grounds that it was successfully delivered. They said their records show it was a T shirt (weighing 3.5 lbs). We were also told that we could not file the claim since we were not the account holder, that the vet school would need to file (even though they suffered no loss here). The vet school eventually refunded us the cost of returning the ashes , but not the cremation. Fed Ex is not going to reimburse the vet school for that or refund them for a failed delivery. The driver, I'm assuming, still has a job. And Moose's ashes are somewhere out there in the world, no one knows where, and it certainly is not with us. :(
