My FTDX-101D went into Yaesu USA service in California for some relatively minor repairs last month. I hated sending across the country from NY, but needed to be done. It gets repaired, I get a tracking number for FedEx. Says will be delivered Tues. Nov 29 by 4:30 PM, and is out for delivery on the 29th, and I will need to sign for it. Stay home all day. Around 2:30 PM, I see the FedEx truck drive by. Hmm. Around 4:30 PM, get a call from FedEx, they say “Are you expecting a package from Yaesu USA”? Yes. Do you live at 406 XXXX Road? No, I live at 409 XXXX Road. They said I need to call Yaesu, because they stipulate it cannot be delivered anywhere but 406 XXXX Road (which does not exist). He said only Yaesu can fix this. So I called Yaesu and explained. OK, they took the info. Next day, tracking tells me it is still delayed for wrong address. I call Yaesu again. Get the right person. She calls FedEx. They would not let her change the address.
Their solution? It will be shipped back to Yaesu USA, they will make a new label. So my radio, which was in a FedEx truck in front of my house yesterday, has to go to California again to have a new label made, because someone typed one wrong digit. They say they will overnight it on the way back to me, but I’m more worried about the increased chance of shipping damage for two unnecessary cross country trips.
Yaesu says FedEx won’t allow them to change the destination address. I call FedEx, and they say Yaesu shipping instructions are that it can only be delivered to the address on the label. Which doesn’t exist. But apparently Yaesu can’t correct the address, though two people at FedEx said they could. They also can’t apparently send a new label to my FedEx local distribution center. FedEx kept telling me “our policy is to only deliver to the address on the label if that is what the shipper requests”. When FedEx called me Tuesday, they told me only the shipper can correct this. I said, but they tried and FedEx said no. She said, well maybe it was the wrong person at Yaesu. Huh? What?
I offered to come pick at up at the FedEx distribution center. They did not even know how to respond.
Yet I have the invoice. I have the tracking number. My name matches the name on the invoice. Any ID can confirm this. It required a signature. I am not a house number. But after travelling 2400 miles and passing a few feet by my driveway in a truck, FedEx and Yaesu decided it should travel another 4800 miles before they actually deliver it.
By the way, if there was a 406 XXXX Road, they would have happily delivered it to the wrong address. I guess their policies aren’t so foolproof.
The minor error on the label should not have created this silly situation. FedEx was no help at all, just kept telling me it’s their policy. I’m sure Yaesu and FedEx have been burned before by incorrect deliveries. Surely, this is not the best solution they could come up with. Institutional inflexibility. It is beyond stupid.
Update : Dec. 7
The rig arrived on Tuesday Dec 6. It left Yaesu on Monday, so it was shipped overnight. It did get back to Yaesu on Friday mid-afternoon last week, but didn’t get shipped before the weekend. Not a big deal. In all, it took an extra week to get it back.
The inner box showed only minor damage, but the outer box is pretty well beat up, after one trip from Asia to USA, and 5 trips across the US in it’s lifetime. The radio was not damaged. It also seems to be working properly (missing virtual com ports now there).
Thanks to Tim Factor at Yaesu for arranging the repair and ensuring all was good. Also to Yaesu Customer Service (sorry, I didn’t get her name) who tried to get FedEx to re-route the delivery instead of shipping back to Yaesu. She kept me in the loop and did what she could.
