FedEx will soon take images of packages at your doorstep to furnish proof of delivery when they don’t need a signature. “This is something e-commerce merchants and customers have been asking for, and we are proud to be the first to announce this service will be available to residential customers,” Brie Carere, FedEx’s chief customer officer, said in a press release announcing the program today.
The free service will be available for FedEx Express and FedEx Ground delivery customers with and without a login to the FedEx Delivery Manager, the company’s free portal.
The new program will be a good source of protection for FedEx, and it should also help business owners whose customers report that their package hasn’t been delivered. It will also be a good resource for customers to determine whether packages ever made it to their door, especially if they’ve gone missing.
Amazon rolled out a similar program called Photo On Delivery back in 2018. It was meant to provide proof of delivery and help customers locate their packages, but it was only available in certain areas. The program allowed the images to be used by Amazon to verify a package’s location, perform quality control, and investigate any issues raised by a customer, Amazon said. Customers who didn’t want photos of their packages taken could opt out of the program.
Customers without a FedEx account can view their images through FedEx’s tracking tool by entering their tracking number. Those with an account can view it through the FedEx Delivery Manager.
FedEx states that the service will first be available for FedEx Delivery Manager users in “select markets” before launching to customers in the U.S. and Canada for the holiday shipping season.
FedEx Corporation, previously Federal Express Corporation and later F.D.X. Corporation, is an American multinational conglomerate bearing company focused on transportation, e-commerce, and services founded in Memphis, Tennessee. The term “FedEx” is a short syllabic form of the title of the company’s original air division, Federal Express, which was employed from 1973 until 2000. FedEx today is best understood for its air delivery service, FedEx Express, one of the first significant shipping companies to offer overnight delivery as flagship assistance.
Since then, FedEx also began FedEx Ground, FedEx Office (known initially as Kinko’s), FedEx Freight, FedEx Supply Chain, and various other services across multiple subsidiaries, often meant to respond to its main competitor, U.P.S. FedEx is also one of the leading contractors of the U.S. government and assists in transporting some United States Postal Service parcels through their Air Cargo Network contract.
FedEx’s distinction in the United States and the world has made it a common topic in widespread culture, with examples including the film Cast Away and some of its marketing slogans. In addition, FedEx has bought the naming rights to FedExField of the N.F.L.’s Washington Commanders and FedExForum of the N.B.A.’s Memphis Grizzlies. FedEx’s air shipping services have made its central hub (aka the “Superhub”) at Memphis International Airport the most engaged cargo airport in the world by 2020 and Hong Kong’s second-busiest cargo airport in the world behind Memphis.
FedEx’s primary competitor in the U.S. and most of its international destinations is the United Parcel Service (U.P.S.). Both companies generally employ similar strategies; their largest hubs for air delivery are in the southern midwest (Memphis for FedEx and Louisville for U.P.S.). Both deliver overnight, 2-day, and ground delivery as default choices, and both frequently use Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport for trans-pacific shipments. Both main hubs are some of the world’s most busy airports for cargo traffic.
FedEx’s other main rival is the United States Postal Service (USPS), as USPS delivers an overnight service (Priority Mail Express), a 2-5 day service (Priority Mail), and an economy/ground service (First Class, Parcel Select Ground). In the U.S., FedEx competes with S.F. Express and DHL to a lesser extent. While DHL’s market stake in the United States is rising, the shipping enterprise (not including USPS) in the United States is primarily overwhelmed by U.P.S. and FedEx; DHL is only a substantial competitor to FedEx outside of the United States.
Amazon, a fleet of trucks, vans, and ships, its airline Amazon Air, and its worldwide staff of more than 1.4 million intends to become the most extensive delivery assistance in the U.S.A.
The FedEx logo is a wordmark conceived in 1994 by Lindon, Leader of Landor Associates of San Francisco. It includes Fed in purple and Ex in orange. The FedEx wordmark is renowned for having a subliminal right-pointing arrow in the negative space between the “E” and the “X,” which was accomplished by designing a proprietary font based on Univers and Futura to emphasize the arrow shape.[36] The leader believed the logo promoted FedEx as “getting from point A to point B reliably with speed and precision.”
In the early 2000s, the Ex was in a distinct color for individual divisions and platinum for the overall corporation use. However, in August 2016, FedEx revealed that all operating units would adopt the purple and orange color logo over the next five years (identical to the original FedEx logo and later employed by FedEx Express).