Controversial hot take: The US mailing system is actually quite good. Oh; I know. It’s bad for a myriad of reasons that may or may not align with the social and political beliefs of the person explaining to you why it’s bad, but overall, it’s amazing. And even more so when you see the myriad of private companies that have been created to exploit the gaps that the USPS is unwilling or unable to address. Sadly, I have to extend a middle finger to some of them today.
Behold! Deliveries. I love Deliveries. Deliveries makes it very easy to love Deliveries. I like it so much that I actually paid for the license as soon as they announced that they were going to switch to a SaaS model so I could get grandfathered in. It makes the very OCD and slightly neurotic endeavor of tracking your packages all the way to your doorstep easy as pie. So imagine my surprise when I see this on the screen.
Apparently FedEx decided that no software is good enough to read their precious tracking information. No software, of course, except their own patented first party software. JuneCloud, the development team behind deliveries, can only shrug, apologize, and give you a very helpful link to their web platform, where I don’t want to go to check on my stuff.
This seems to be a completely artificial limitation. Quite why I’m not sure. It’s not easy to think about anyone who would shrug, download an app, and create an account with every mail service unless they are moving prodigious volumes of crap around. An unlikely situation for the majority of users. And now those users just have to sit and take it, until someone manages to come through and say “Hey, if we’re doing a limitation, we should at least give the customers something in return”
Then we have to expect for them not to be pelted with pens and laughed out of the boardroom. Still, for whatever the opinion of a middling blogger and ZZ-List content creator is worth: No FedEx (and any other mail company who is either doing this or thinking about it). I will not switch to your first party garbage just because you really really hope you will get some additional money from me eventually.
Granted, I don’t know if FedEx’s app is garbage, but if this how they treat their customers, I’m not especially inclined to find out.
