Anyone else have their Panther F order go astray?

Unfortunately for me I won’t be seeing my new Cyber Hobby Panther F because for about the third time now we’ve had a parcel disappear in the Los Angeles FedEx terminal. At L.A. FedEx your parcels check it but they don’t always check out (not on a FedEx truck anyway). The thing that really bothers us is that a FedEx representative gave me false tracking information on the phone. I talked to someone else at FedEx that said the information was suspicious and asked me to call again this morning to discuss our situation with a supervisor that was not available to us yesterday afternoon.

I don’t hold out much hope that the kit will be found, it’ll more than likely end up on ebay in a very short time.

Rick

I worked briefly in a very small Vermont Fed Ex package center. I worked evenings unloading trucks for outbound shipment, not as a morning load the trucks for delivery guy.

I'll admit that 3 times is VERY suspicious, and I hold no great loyalty to Fed Ex, but there are lots of reasons that packages go astray even up here in tiny little Vermont.

Given the volume of packages coming through even up here for the holidays and the amount of time I as a 'box monkey' had to deal with each one , I dont think that it is very likely that someone in the warehouse, saw your box, said 'ah-ha, this is the new Panther from Cyber hobby, I'll take this.'

Jewelry manufacturers, small electronics, liquor, adult material maybe. But the folks I worked with would not know a model box from a box of swimsuit models.

From the inside, Fed Ex takes package theft very seriouslly, there are cameras everywhere and employees do not get to bring backpacks or bags of any type into the package handling area.

Fed Ex says it prosecutes vigorouslly and there is a $5000 reward for ratting someone out who is stealing.
The crew I worked with was tight and had been together for a while (like the 'old hands being there 6+months) , but this is not a high paying job and no one on the crew would pass up $5K for anyone else.


The drivers have more time with the packages, but all packages are scanned onto the trucks, so the drivers are responsible for each package. Even our trucks up here are alarmed and the drivers wear a RF wristband that unlocks the back of the truck.

On the other hand, the inside of a fed ex processing facility is organized insanity, run at high speed. Packages are supposed to fill every meter of the converor belt, and the belts never stop. Everything is 'supposed' to be scanned, and scan rates of af 99%+ are the norm, but when you're loading 750+ packages per hour into a trailer..

It is possible your box got loaded onto the wrong truck, came back, got set aside, and has not been 'found' yet.
I hope that's the case.

I sure hope your kits turn up
I know this is no consolation, but I hope a little info on the inner working of Fed Ex helps.

Mike
Mike

Mike, thanks for the insight. Hopefully the package is only side tracked, hopefully we'll find out more later this morning.

Again, unfortunately for us, both U.P.S. and FedEx service out of southern California have become worse over recent years and lately problematic because of lost, damage or missing items. The U.S. post office can now beat both companies hands down out of L.A. to the Central San Joaquin Valley and at a fraction of the cost.

Small business people I know have also had numerous problems with the same area. So much so that in recent years almost 100% of the people I talk shop with have returned to the U.S. postal service.

Rick

Yes! Good news to report. The package was side tracked when it was not scanned properly at the L.A. terminal. It was then mistakenly loaded onto a trailer that sat idle for a few days, then headed the opposite direction to (almost) the East Coast. The parcel was finally headed off in Tennessee and then got an airplane ride all the way home. 10 U.S. cities altogether, covering most of the country from coast to coast, but eventually made it home.

FedEx had no explanation for the errant tracking information and they weren’t happy with the phone rep that gave us information that he could not confirm, but they did apologize for the mess and that’s good too.

More than makes up for the few times that things didn’t.

Rick