Finders Are Keepers
Crewmembers convert wayward FedEx package into UPS business.
UPS has a new customer “for life” after delivering an overnight letter originally shipped with and then apparently lost by a competitor. Captain Pat Hartman and First Officer Randy Bania found a FedEx envelope while on layover just outside of Jackson, MS.
“We were walking back from dinner and noticed a FedEx letter by the side of the road that wasn’t there earlier. It hadn’t been there too long; there was no damage or tire tracks on it,” Pat said.
“It was in an area where there weren’t any businesses. It would have been lost forever,” Randy said.
The crewmembers picked it up and said it didn’t take long to decide to ship the letter, not by FedEx of course, but UPS.
“We thought it would be kind of amusing for the recipient to find a FedEx package inside a UPS envelope. We chuckled all the way back to the hotel,” Randy said. On a more serious note, “we realized the customer shipped it overnight, it was important, and whatever it was he wanted it there the next day.”
Pat and Randy took the letter to the Jackson Gateway when they checked in for their flight later that night.
“They walked in and the captain said, ‘I have an unusual request for you,’” Jackson Gateway Supervisor Mike Clarke said. “We thought it might be a good way to get some business to go ahead and get the letter on to its destination. I made a label for it, put it inside a UPS envelope and left a message for the customer, giving him the new tracking number for the UPS label.”
With the combined efforts of Clarke and crew, the letter was delivered on schedule the following morning.And the customer? Amazed.
“I was really stunned,” said customer Andy Taggart, an attorney in Madison, MS. “What I would have expected is that when your guys came across it, they would just see that the letter got back to my office. It never occurred to me that they would make sure it got delivered.”
Taggart said he has no idea how the letter was lost — he put it in a FedEx drop box outside his office earlier in the day — but UPS’s outstanding service in the situation “has earned you my exclusive and energetic business from now on.”
The package contained a letter he had promised to send to another lawyer overnight, Taggart said, and if it hadn’t arrived on time, there would have been a loss of trust between the two attorneys. As a one-man office, Taggart said he only ships a few packages a month, but he’s told other people about what happened, and they share his amazement that UPS delivered a FedEx package.
UPS delivered the shipment free of charge. “The customer offered to pay for the letter,” Clarke said. “I told him I just want your business, that’s how you can pay me.” Clarke submitted a Take Charge sales lead and UPS opened an account for Taggart.
Pat said he and Randy don’t feel like they did anything out of the ordinary, but “it was sort of weird, UPS finding a FedEx package. You never know what you’re going to find.”
