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FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

fedex.com

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Re: FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

#61

Post by HugoDaniel »

HugoDaniel wrote: post #60
gech wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>passed through customs Your vendor selected to bill the duties and taxes to you.

Then why did FedEx explicitly told me that the 50EUR was the charge for the paper to pick it up and not for the package itself ? Why did the customs told me that there was no charge for books and that anyone with the paper for the package could pick it up free of charge ?

If we want to be really specific:

By FedEx i mean "Rangel Expresso SA" (www.rangel.pt or www.fedex.com/pt) which is their representation (Global Service Participant (GSP)) here in Portugal.

By customs i mean airport customs (the ones i contacted), not the portuguese state customs. I don't know how they evaluated the package, they probably didn't even knew about it (due to lack of staff or other stuff...).

Re: FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

#62

Post by bogomipz »

dkersten wrote: post #57

FedEx is the only courier service I've ever had problems with (once they didn't deliver for three days in a row saying there was nobody home: there were five of us in the house those days and we were looking out for the delivery, when they eventually told me on the phone that the delivery would arrive by X time, it arrived 4 hours after X... They also tried to charge me import duty for an item that cost less than thr…

I've had similar problems, I don't hold them in the high regard that I used to. This is anecdotal but I think when they merged with Kinkos the service faltered a bit. I also always thought this was an odd match culturally - The Kinkos experience has always felt like the epitome of slow and inefficient to me while Fed Ex has as their official slogan 'the world on time."

Re: FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

#63

Post by lathiat »

Ntrails wrote: post #26
0x0 wrote: post #10

The instructions should at least limit the "always allow" to the fedex sites. Pretty bad advice to always allow globally.

This is basically the chain of events that led to my mother disabling adblock globally (as instructed by a tv channel "on demand" website), and subsequently got an ad popup for "there's a virus on your computer" and so on and so forth. Cue a day of my weekend spent fixing a dead laptop.

and people wonder why iOS doesn't have an option to let you side load apps, even after changing a setting. Or why Android warns you harshly on every boot when you install an external CA, etc.

Re: FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

#64

Post by Corrado »

archon wrote: post #25
greenpizza13 wrote: post #8

Ha. No thanks. If I go to use FedEx and flash is required I'm just going to use a different carrier. They are just delaying the inevitable. I bet there's some higher-ups at FedEx who still like flash and refuse to give it up.

> I bet there's some higher-ups at FedEx who still like flash and refuse to give it up. I suspect this is just a delaying action - a vain attempt to retain some of their web order volume - while they frantically write the replacement for their Flash component.

Then again, Flash has been deprecated for almost 10 years already. When the original iPhone famously came out with a no Flash policy back in 2007, the technical community knew that it was a dead format. Even granting the general corporate mindset of dragging your feet there has been plenty of time to source a replacement for Flash in your ecosystem.

Re: FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

#65

Post by smsm42 »

HugoDaniel wrote: post #59
smsm42 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure the money actually goes to Fedex? From the description it looks like the money goes to customs, which is a government agency. In that case, it's not clear why you're angry with Fedex, which pretty much has no choice but to charge whatever the government tell them to charge.

I called customs, talked to them, they don't apply fees to educational books. They released it free of charge but only to be picked by the entity with the paper for it. FedEx had that paper and they would only pick it up with 50EUR on their pockets. I argued that i could pick it up from customs myself and pay whatever taxes if i had the paper in my name instead. They said the 50EUR charge would be for the pickup pape…

Wow that looks like extremely shady practice.

Re: FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

#66

Post by KyeRussell »

Corrado wrote: post #64
archon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet there's some higher-ups at FedEx who still like flash and refuse to give it up. I suspect this is just a delaying action - a vain attempt to retain some of their web order volume - while they frantically write the replacement for their Flash component.

Then again, Flash has been deprecated for almost 10 years already. When the original iPhone famously came out with a no Flash policy back in 2007, the technical community knew that it was a dead format. Even granting the general corporate mindset of dragging your feet there has been plenty of time to source a replacement for Flash in your ecosystem.

I bet all that hindsight really helps you sound like some sort of visionary. Flash was alive and well long after the introduction of the iPhone. Ignoring the fact it was hardly available internationally, and only on a single carrier in the United States. Nerds hated Flash, but it was still seen as a somewhat acceptable and expected technology to come across.

Re: FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

#67

Post by invaliduser »

briandear wrote: post #36
HugoDaniel wrote: post #19

I sincerely hope that FedEx fails. I once bought the book "FreeBSD Kernel Internals" from informit. They sent it through FedEx. I payed the shipping costs in the informit site, as standard procedure. The book passed through customs fine, then FedEx hold it and told me they would not deliver the book unless i paid them 50EUR. This is their current and common practice here in Portugal. Fsck them.

If it makes you feel any better UPS in France does that to me all the time. It isn't the carriers -- it's the protectionist tax schemes of the EU. I once had a replacement wheel for a kid's stroller sent to me in France from the US. The wheel cost $20, and I had to pay $35 in import duties -- despite that part being unavailable anywhere outside of the US. Blame the government, not FedEx.

If you live in France, it seems that UPS made you pay abusively the custom duties (not due if the value of the package is below 150€). You should only have paid for the VAT, which tops at 20%. http://www.douane.gouv.fr/articles/a10753-achats-a-distance-...

Also, I got a delivery by UPS in France once, and they made me pay the custom duties (which was fine, for a parcel valued at 400€), but also added their own «paperwork fees» that were as high as the custom duties, and were pretty much unexpected.

Re: FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

#68

Post by numberwhun »

I believe that because of all of the vulnerabilities in the Adobe Flash products, people should think of their computer's security first and give FedEx the preverbal virtual finger, and force them to recode their software to use html5 video instead. It is becoming the new standard and is (currently) safer than risking the vulnerabilities in Flash.

Re: FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash

#69

Post by jethro_tell »

magic_beans wrote: post #50
jethro_tell wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably just didn't think it would be an issue and refused to fund the site migration. Which is strange, what have they been doing for mobile? Turns out, when people switch that shit off in default no one's going to turn it back on.

They're mobile site is despicable. UPS has a decent mobile site and very decent (even good) app. Brown shirts are winning.

From what I hear, shipping is tough these days since Amazon delivers the small stuff and tasks big items to the shipping companies. The margin is in lots of small packages, it's tough to make money from a truck that is only delivering big stuff.

Point being, winning is relative.

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