UCAN community member ktmitchell writes the following: "In our modern global economy, the old cliché “time is money” has become an understatement. For the small business owners, when goods are lost, money is lost. Wages that could have been earned using those goods disappear as well. Consumers rely on shipping companies to complete business transactions by moving goods as quickly as the deals were made. Just as customers are confident that their shipments will arrive on time, they believe their packages will arrive undamaged.

When it comes to FedEx Ground Shipping, that confidence could be misplaced faith. I learned that the hard way when I shipped my turntables from my apartment in New York City to my mother’s home in California in the spring of 2007. Although I packed the turntables in a padlocked professional, padded case, the package arrived opened and damaged with expensive equipment missing.

After running into brick walls when dealing with FedEx, I decided to do some digging to see if other people were having similar problems. What I uncovered was shocking.

In most instances FedEx refused to compensate these customers, or give them a refund of their shipping cost. This was true even if customers paid the full price of insurance before shipping their item. If settlements were offered, it only covered a fraction of the monetary damage. Again, people stated Fed Ex cited their user policy as the reason to refuse most claims. Small claims courts uphold FedEx’s refusal of liability.

FedEx delivery drivers are independent contractors, not full employees. This means the majority of have no insurance, no sick days, no overtime pay, no vacations and no motivation to handle packages carefully, or even deliver them to the right address. Independent contractor status makes employees difficult to track if packages “go missing.” On the Consumer Affairs site, Jack of Texas claims "the prevalence of damaged packages is due to FedEx using conveyer belts to load packages directly onto trucks". Imagine your well padded but delicate Christmas gift sliding down that belt into an unpadded truck— and some professor's 50 pound shipment of books tumbling behind it. Jack goes on to say that "the package handlers are only part time workers who perform “8-hour job in a 4-5 hour span,” receive no benefits, and don’t care if they throw packages".

Even more frightening, the US postal service has agreed to pay 6.3 billion to have access to FedEx’s air network. The Association for Postal Commerce claims since this deal was finalized in 2001, the time it takes to deliver Priority Mail has increased from 2.15 to 2.69 days.

Ultimately, sweet deals for politicians leave a sour taste in their constituents’ mouths. When Federal law bows to corporate contracts, the government has ceased to work for its citizens. Vendors on sites like EBay and Amazon stand to lose a substantial portion of their business if they cannot rely on Fed Ex to protect their packages during shipping. Not only can self-employed people lose money if they lose their items, they lose time chasing down compensation and wages from soured business deals. Now that FedEx has part of it’s operations under the jurisdiction of the Postal Service, it is up to the Postmaster and Inspector General to oversee this corporation’s day-to-day operations in order to insure quality service."