Under Promise and Over Deliver

We’ve all heard these words countless times and on rare occasions have probably dealt with a company that has fulfilled this slogan.


Given the state of things today however, the delivering of this philosophy is almost non-existent. You would think that with the shrinking American dollar and with companies struggling for our business that any smart CEO would stress this mind set onto their employees. After all, who wouldn’t want to spend their money where they got the most bang for their buck?

This brings me to the essence of this letter. A few weeks back, a friend of mine ordered a new phone from Straight Talk. The shipping was free and was handled by FedEx. When she went on line to check the status of her order, the phone had been shipped and everything seemed to be going fine. Her order arrived in the Birmingham area on time and all appeared to be going according to schedule.

So what’s the problem you might be asking? Well, check this out. The phone was put onto the truck and went out a day earlier than anticipated. This was really good because it meant that it would arrive a day early and since it was a gift that would please both her and the recipient. Only, the phone was Not delivered that day. So when my friend checked to see why, she found out that the scheduled date wasn’t until the following day and the phone, which was already on the truck, was returned to the warehouse for delivery the next day.

My question is “when did we go from Under Promise and Over Deliver to just give them what they expect? Come on FedEx, don’t we have enough companies treating us like that? I mean here you had the chance to shine and yet you settled to just be mediocre. I wonder how UPS would have handled it?

What’s your thought?

By:  Bryanj