This is what's happening in the economy. The total number of transactions of goods and services have been dropping. But those few transactions are priced higher than pre-covid. So it "appears" that earnings are high. Companies have been sabotaging themselves by increasing prices so much that their number of customers are dropping fast.
Source for this claim?
The BEA tracks quantities of goods and services produced in detail every quarter, and their data shows that for most categories, quantities are up, not down, since pre-COVID (i.e., Q4 2019). [1]
There are a exceptions where quantities are down: energy goods, health care, transportation services, recreation services, transportation equipment, private investment in structures, certain nondurable goods, and the output of nonprofit institutions. All other categories are actually up since before COVID. This includes motor vehicle part production, durable goods, restaurant food, clothing, housing/utilities, industrial equipment, computer hardware, etc. Overall, the quantity increases are slightly outweighing the quantity decreases, according to the standard measure.
[1] Table 1.5.3. Real Gross Domestic Product, Expanded Detail, Quantity Indexes , https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/index_nipa.cfm
Yeah, including to far-flung hotels for use in depositions.
Way back in the day, we used to take advantage of this and ship huge boxes of stuff for vacations instead of checking bags. It was far cheaper and much more convenient! Pack up anything you want and add a pair of scissors and a roll of packing tape. FedEx would pick it up from your house and send it to the hotel, which would keep it for you until you arrived. Because you filled out the shipping label like the lawyers did, every big hotel in the world already knew how to deal with it. When you left, use the scissors and packing tape to put everything back in the boxes, and tell the front desk you have some boxes that need to go to the loading dock for FedEx.
Law firm discount codes were insanely good :)
Sad to hear that this is no longer a good deal :(
After last year, there is no way I would ship anything Fedex Ground -- at least not until they've had a few years to correct some serious issues. Pretty much every Fedex Ground parcel I had during peak had some sort of major drama -- lost, damaged, severely delayed, misdelivered, you name it. Everyone had problems during peak in '21, but Fedex had an absolute meltdown.
When I reached out to the original retailer via customer support we both had a good laugh and they got me a replacement shipped via a different vendor same-day.
My take is large companies have gotten so fed up of fed-ex that they either leveraged it to negotiate bottom barrel pricing or moved to an alternative service.
Not sure who their market is.
