So what are my options now? FedEx and the Post Office are essentially both telling me it is the fault of the other, and now my order is headed back to the sender. Post office claims there was "an issue with the label" and Fedex says "once Post office has it, its out of our control."

It doesn't help that there is no expedient way to contact woot other than wait for hours/days for them to get back to your email, especially during a woot off.

Having worked for both FedEx and the Post office I would say that based on the the limited info you've given, (or were given?) that both answers that you are getting are probably true. To be honest I astounds me the we don't have more trouble with smartpost than we do.

When I worked at FedEx Express, we could not internally track FedEx SmartPost packages. They were a black hole totally lacking in oversight or accountability. And certainly once it was handed over to USPS for delivery, FedEx has no control over it. BUT, smartpost packages are handed over to USPS in bulk and the post office has no way of knowing if there is a problem until it's too late.

The default is going to be to return it to the sender to deal with. SO it sounds like you are going to have to go through woot, since neither FedEx or USPS still has possession of the package.

Did they say what the problem with the label was? I'm having a tough time coming up with the situation in which there is a valid tracking number that can't be traced to an address if necessary. The only things I could think of that were label related that would get the package returned to the sender by the post office, a)postage due- which shouldn't have been an issue because FedEx would have handled that aspect of it or b)an invalid or incomplete address, which shouldn't have been an issue because FedEx's system crosschecks delivery addresses to make sure they are complete (and exist) when they accept a package.

DashTheHand wrote:So what are my options now? FedEx and the Post Office are essentially both telling me it is the fault of the other, and now my order is headed back to the sender. Post office claims there was "an issue with the label" and Fedex says "once Post office has it, its out of our control."

It doesn't help that there is no expedient way to contact woot other than wait for hours/days for them to get back to your email, especially during a woot off.

We really try to answer emails within 24 hours and are often faster than that. Please email us at service@woot.com so we can help you out.