u/Oculata

I wanted to share a story about a lost FedEx package that I managed to rescue, because I learned a lot along the way, and wanted to give back, as some of the things I learned that made this a successful outcome I learned here on r/FedEx.

tl;dr: An AirTag inadvertently packed into a box allowed me find my package trapped in FedEx overgoods in Salt Lake City; an email to a FedEx executive helped me find someone who rescued the box.

So my 19 year old came home from college in NY and decided to ship a bunch of her stuff back to WA state. She used a services called CollegeBoxes that charged a stupid amount of money to give her boxes and then ship them via FedEx. CollegeBoxes is a division of U-Haul, so that should give you a sense of foreboding. She packed and shipped 8 boxes - fortunately she labeled the boxes with a big Sharpie with her name and the "account number" that CollegeBoxes gave her. And then she put the waybills into sticky envelopes and put them onto the boxes.

Fast forward a few weeks and she arrived home, and we were able to track the boxes. Seven of the 8 arrived. The last tracking number showed that the box was picked up and arrived at a FedEx location, and then a couple of hours later, left a FedEx origin facility. But then ... nothing. For two weeks - no movement.

We ended up going off on a pre-planned vacation, so my thought was, "Well, hopefully it'll get found in the next couple of weeks and delivered," but two weeks later when we got back, nothing had changed. So it's now been a month and we were convinced that the box was lost. I emailed back-and-forth with CollegeBoxes and their claims office and despite my pushing for them to find the box, they basically said, "It's a FedEx problem - we have no insights." We filed a claim and just figured we were going to take the loss of whatever was in the box, hoping that it wasn't anything special or valuable (did I mention that my daughter is 19, so of course she doesn't remember what's in the box [dad shrug]).

A month later I was looking at Find My on my iPhone for some reason and I saw that there was an AirTag from a suitcase I'd given my daughter when she was at college now hanging out in Salt Lake City somewhere. That didn't make sense - none of us have been to SLC in years. So I began to suspect that this might be her box. I asked my daughter if she could've put the AirTag in that box, and she said that she might have done so inadvertently. So now, the question was, "What's at the location in Salt Lake City?". Find My showed me that the box was in a warehouse with no name. I took a screenshot of the map:

Could this be the missing box? And where in the world is this?

But having a screenshot told me nothing, so I used Gemini to reverse engineer the address and started searching for it and came up with "FedEx Ground Package Research Services" (a/k/a Overgoods). And while there was a Reddit thread on this topic, there was no clear guidance on how to get a box out of this FedEx purgatory. I called FedEx and tried to explain this to various customer service representatives, but that was two days and several hours my life that I'll never get back. There was nobody who was able to help.

So my dilemma was clear: I was 99% sure that this was the missing package. I was 99% sure it's in a FedEx facility. But I had no idea who to talk to, and of course once the AirTag battery dies, it's likely that any chance of finding the box will die with it. So what to do. Well, it turns out that there's an executive at FedEx who isn't shy about having her email address out there - it's their EVP and Chief Customer Officer. So I sent a polite and respectful email to her with the photos and info I had, and my hypothesis that the missing box was in Overgoods. Much to my surprise, I got a phone call the very next day from a lovely woman in Memphis who actually listened to me. She took all of the information, and then over the next week not only investigated this, she called me back multiple times - sometimes we talked, sometimes she left me detailed voicemails. She gave me her extension number and her last name. She called the overgoods facility and acted as a go-between, and took what I new and passed it onto the overgoods folks, until they were able to use the fact that my daughter had put her name on the outside of the box to ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY LOCATE THE BOX. I could even see, using the AirTag, the box move from outside the building (presumably storage) to inside the building.

It took a couple of days because they had to open the box and inspect it for hazardous materials, but in the end they repackaged the contents and shipped it to us, and not 4-5 days later it arrived at our home. Two months after it had originally been shipped, but it was here. And I was, once again, the Best. Dad. Ever.

I, of course, couldn't take full credit. My daughter gets partial credit for unintentionally putting the AirTag into the box and for properly labeling the outside of the box with her name. And the lovely person from FedEx gets a tremendous amount of credit for being a stellar employee and working diligently to get a package delivered (which I described in flowing language in an email to the FedEx leadership team). The Chief Customer Office gets credit too for not just having her email out there, but having a team in place to help.

For as much as we can slag on FedEx or any large corporation, it's good to know that there are people who want to do their jobs and do them well, and who really do go the extra mile top help when asked. Would that it were easier to get this level of service for everyone, but I remain hopeful that there are people who, when you ask nicely, are willing to help. It made my daughter's day to not have to wonder what she might have lost in that big box of crap. And it made my day to use the incredible technology we have (AirTag, Gemini, email) to solve what seemed like a hopeless problem.

Family and I took a 2 week vacation to Italy and came back way over the personal allowance limit, way over the alcohol limit, and with a bunch of food items, and wanted to share my experience (TL;DR - it was fine).

We live in WA State and drove north to YVR, flew to Italy via the UK, and returned to YVR and then spent the night in Surrey and then crossed the border at Peace Arch around 11am today (Tuesday). Having never flow from Europe into YVR before, I didn't know what to expect. I came prepared with an itemized list of all purchases with corresponding receipts and a complete list of all of the alcohol since we knew we were going to be way over the exemptions. We did our pre-declaration on the ArriveCAN app and that part was pretty easy (scan your passports at the kisok and get a receipt).

When we got to the immigration officer, they asked us only about alcohol and food and so we declared what we brought (~10L of wine/spirits and a bunch of processed foods - flour, olive oil, truffle powder, some sauces, chocolate, etc.). Before I got a chance to tell him about our purchases they put a big "C" on the receipt we got from the kiosk and said that the cashier on baggage claim side was closed (it was about 7p on a Monday when we arrived), and that we'd need to see the cashier after we gather our bags.

We got all of our bags and headed out and got to another immigration officer who saw the big "C" on our receipt and sent us to a secondary inspection area where one guy was having his every belonging being opened and getting politely but firmly told he was being deported. We went to the cashier window and after about 5 minutes a guy showed up looking a little disorganized. He asked us, again, only about alcohol and was doing math with a pen and paper as I told him what we had. He asked specifically what kinds of spirits we had and he couldn't decide if amaro was liquor or wine (it's about 17-25% ABV depending on the maker). In the end he did some math on a calculator and said, "How about we call it 3 liters" and he charged me $31.25 CAD - who am I to argue, right? He took a credit card and gave me a receipt and said that I could show it at the US Border. We left and they never asked about anything else and never looked in a single bag. They took our word for the whole thing.

This morning we got to the Peace Arch and the NEXUS line was the longer line. The CBP was out with a lot of people going car-to-car, and a dog. We switched into the regular line and ended up with a super-friendly CBP officer who wanted to know what the highlights of our trip were and how we liked the food. I told him exactly how much we we brought back in purchases (~$6000USD), that we brought back non-processed food (no meat, cheese, soil, fruit, veg, or vish), and that we brought back 10L or so of alcohol for which we paid duties on arrival at Canada. I told him that I had a fully itemized list on my phone and computer and also all of the receipts. He barely gave it a thought and waved us through and as we were pulling out he said, "Thank you for declaring everything!". The whole thing took <3 minutes.

Long story short - - I will continue my practice of always declaring every single thing (as people here re-iterate over and over). The half hour it took for me to tally up everything on an excel spreadsheet and keep all of the receipts was a low-cost insurance policy. I used Gemini to estimate the duties if they were sticklers at the border and it was still worth bring back whatever we wanted. The fact that we were charged nothing was a pleasant surprise. Kudos to the super-nice US CBP officer for making the crossing easy and friendly.