
FedEx is offering $5 off web orders to enable Flash - donjh
http://www.fedex.com/us/office/no-flash.html
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mikeash
Seems like a misleading title to me. I read it as saying that you have a
choice of ordering without Flash at a higher price. In fact, Flash is a
straight requirement no matter what, and they're offering a code for $5 off in
an attempt to compensate people for the hassle of installing it.

So really, you're getting $5 off _for starting the process without Flash_. If
you already have Flash installed, you'll never see this page and never get the
discount code.

Obviously they should stop requiring Flash, but the title doesn't seem to
accurately describe things.

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sverige
Wish I had a highlight reel of the meetings that led to this decision. The
shouting, the red faces, the eye rolling, the gigantic exhalations lel.

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brianwawok

        If you are using Chrome on a desktop or laptop:
    
        Open a new tab in your Chrome browser.
        Type “chrome:plugins” in your URL address field.
        Under Adobe Flash Player click the checkbox next to Always allowed to run.
    
    

If doing this gets your box hacked, are they providing PC repair services?

~~~
ptk
Also, this method no longer works either since they dropped the
"chrome://plugins" page in Chrome 57.

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nix0n
Takes the term "flash sale" to another level.

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greenpizza13
Ha. No thanks. If I go to use FedEx and flash is required I'm just going to
use a different carrier.

They are just delaying the inevitable. I bet there's some higher-ups at FedEx
who still like flash and refuse to give it up.

~~~
archon
> I bet there's some higher-ups at FedEx who still like flash and refuse to
> give it up.

I suspect this is just a delaying action - a vain attempt to retain some of
their web order volume - while they frantically write the replacement for
their Flash component.

~~~
Corrado
Then again, Flash has been deprecated for almost 10 years already. When the
original iPhone famously came out with a no Flash policy back in 2007, the
technical community knew that it was a dead format. Even granting the general
corporate mindset of dragging your feet there has been plenty of time to
source a replacement for Flash in your ecosystem.

~~~
KyeRussell
I bet all that hindsight really helps you sound like some sort of visionary.
Flash was alive and well long after the introduction of the iPhone. Ignoring
the fact it was hardly available internationally, and only on a single carrier
in the United States. Nerds hated Flash, but it was still seen as a somewhat
acceptable and expected technology to come across.

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sergiotapia
Even if they offered me $100, I wouldn't enable Flash. I'm guessing they're
hard at work writing their Flash component into HTML/JS.

~~~
bhandziuk
100 $ is a lot of money...you can probably handle flash just for FedEx I bet.

Though you're probably right. They'll have an updated version asap.

~~~
sqeaky
Literally not worth the time or loss in trust. I don't use anything closed
source on most of my machines (without proper sandingboxing).

The main machine I have with closed source software gets only one credit card,
with a low limit and that is for steam.

I would be setting up VM for this. More likely I would just call and get what
I need or switch carriers.

~~~
tehlike
You know credit cards have 0 liability so it actually wouldnt matter if it had
high limit? I never got the "i wont give my card" argument.

~~~
sqeaky
That is why I used one credit card on the machine.

I didn't use a second. I don't want to deal with the hassle. I don't want to
have someone steal tiny amounts of money.

Perhaps, I have other things than financials that are sensitive on my
machines.

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gigatexal
Cheaper than re-engineering their enterprise web facing app I guess. Sad.

~~~
cookiecaper
I'm sure they're just resentful that someone is "forcing them" to rewrite what
they perceive to be a fully-functional product "for no reason". And to be
fair, that sentiment is by no means rare; that's why there are still COBOL
programmers, after all, and to a lesser extent, "enterprise" OS distributions.

Take into consideration that while the bare functionality of Flash has been
"replaced" by HTML 5, there is nothing that really comes close to actually
replacing Flash the IDE, especially not in a way that Flash developers find
amenable. I've been working with a group to convert a Flash game to HTML 5,
and, to put it lightly, it's a massive mess. There is currently no clear
migration path. The market is really lacking there.

Even Adobe has given up on pretending like Flash is a solution for
applications now; the IDE has been renamed "Animate".

In any case, FedEx is pitting itself against Google and the web community in a
way I doubt they really understand. Whichever upper-mid-level manager green-
lighted this is pretty naive.

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dkersten
FedEx is the only courier service I've ever had problems with (once they
didn't deliver for three days in a row saying there was nobody home: there
were five of us in the house those days and we were looking out for the
delivery, when they eventually told me on the phone that the delivery would
arrive by X time, it arrived 4 hours after X... They also tried to charge me
import duty for an item that cost less than threshold and more recently they
tried to get me to pay VAT on a VAT-exempt item) and I don't use them unless I
have absolutely no other choice. This is just another in a long list of
turnoffs for me for this shitty company.

No other courier has ever done any of these things.

~~~
bogomipz
I've had similar problems, I don't hold them in the high regard that I used
to. This is anecdotal but I think when they merged with Kinkos the service
faltered a bit. I also always thought this was an odd match culturally - The
Kinkos experience has always felt like the epitome of slow and inefficient to
me while Fed Ex has as their official slogan 'the world on time."

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koolba
I bet they'd save a bunch of money if they added a flash based cat video
instead of a coupon.

Users would enable flash to watch the video, because that's what users do, and
then it'll be enabled for the rest of checkout.

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archon
I encountered that last night when trying to get something printed. Nope. My
money went to a different printer.

I'd be really curious to see some numbers on how successful this has been for
them.

~~~
r0m4n0
Yea I would be curious as well. I'm sure this was the direct result of
customer service receiving high call volumes on the same issue. If you look at
their web app that relies on flash, its a real behemoth to rebuild so this
credit for the end user annoyance probably seemed like an obvious long term
bandage.

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0x0
The instructions should at least limit the "always allow" to the fedex sites.
Pretty bad advice to always allow globally.

~~~
Ntrails
This is basically the chain of events that led to my mother disabling adblock
globally (as instructed by a tv channel "on demand" website), and subsequently
got an ad popup for "there's a virus on your computer" and so on and so forth.

Cue a day of my weekend spent fixing a dead laptop.

~~~
lathiat
and people wonder why iOS doesn't have an option to let you side load apps,
even after changing a setting. Or why Android warns you harshly on every boot
when you install an external CA, etc.

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ceejay
My experience with FedEx's technology stack is minimal, but I can tell you
that all publicly exposed FedEx technology (ie. apis, etc) confirm without a
shadow of a doubt that FedEx is not a technology company and they should leave
the evolution of the web to others.

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yodon
I was amazed that MSNBC wanted me to enable flash to watch a video yesterday.

I would think AWS and Azure would have cleaned up grabbing all those
transcoding dollars by now. It's not like the impending death of flash was a
surprise to anyone.

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tvanantwerp
This makes me think about a related issue I've encountered at work: remote
check deposit software from banks (think a small scanner designed for
businesses to deposit multiple checks, not a smartphone app) is typically a
browser-based Java applet. Already the latest Chrome and Firefox straight up
won't let you use this. I haven't seen any bank that uses something other than
Java applets for remote deposit, and I don't have a clue if any of them are
working on replacing it.

If anyone by chance knows a bank with remote deposit software that _isn 't_
Java in the browser, I would love to know about it.

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24gttghh
Has a company ever gone this route before?

~~~
droidist2
Companies used to require IE a lot back in the late 90s and early 00s, if that
counts.

~~~
alexanderson
Definitely. My company has several vendors that require us to use IE and
Silverlight to access their products. It's been a pain for us in IT to figure
out how to support those vendor's products while still maintaining security.

~~~
droidist2
Oh yeah, I forgot about Silverlight, _cries_

~~~
24gttghh
I had to install it for a customer yesterday. I actually thought it had been
retired...

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numberwhun
I believe that because of all of the vulnerabilities in the Adobe Flash
products, people should think of their computer's security first and give
FedEx the preverbal virtual finger, and force them to recode their software to
use html5 video instead. It is becoming the new standard and is (currently)
safer than risking the vulnerabilities in Flash.

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M_Grey
I've often said things like, "Not even if you paid me," but the truth is that
rarely are you offered money like this.

Not even for $5.

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smsm42
Is there a portable way to create something like FedEx label in browser
without flash? If there is, how hard would it be to make something like that -
on the order of writing a new 2d graphics library from scratch? Very
creatively use an existing an one? Just use an existing library and any
moderately competent developer could do it?

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derrida
Wow, Flash is worth _that much_ to them. I wonder what the functionality is
that's worth _that much_ and what it would cost to change what ever existing
workplace culture, upskilling & what have you. It might be a great investment
on their behalf.

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azakai
Also bad, they only mention support for 2 browsers, Chrome and Safari.

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HugoDaniel
I sincerely hope that FedEx fails. I once bought the book "FreeBSD Kernel
Internals" from informit. They sent it through FedEx. I payed the shipping
costs in the informit site, as standard procedure. The book passed through
customs fine, then FedEx hold it and told me they would not deliver the book
unless i paid them 50EUR.

This is their current and common practice here in Portugal. Fsck them.

~~~
briandear
If it makes you feel any better UPS in France does that to me all the time. It
isn't the carriers -- it's the protectionist tax schemes of the EU. I once had
a replacement wheel for a kid's stroller sent to me in France from the US. The
wheel cost $20, and I had to pay $35 in import duties -- despite that part
being unavailable anywhere outside of the US.

Blame the government, not FedEx.

~~~
HugoDaniel
FedEx (and apparently UPS) do this without any type of warning, they are
probably exploiting some loophole in the law to be able to do it. They can't
expect happy reactions from their customers. I blame them for doing it without
proper communication and also anyone that plays along with them without
providing proper alternatives after knowing that they do this kind of stuff.

That is not the way business should be done. There should be a social
responsibility part in every company. Extorting money goes against that.

~~~
smsm42
Are you sure the money actually goes to Fedex? From the description it looks
like the money goes to customs, which is a government agency. In that case,
it's not clear why you're angry with Fedex, which pretty much has no choice
but to charge whatever the government tell them to charge.

~~~
HugoDaniel
I called customs, talked to them, they don't apply fees to educational books.
They released it free of charge but only to be picked by the entity with the
paper for it. FedEx had that paper and they would only pick it up with 50EUR
on their pockets. I argued that i could pick it up from customs myself and pay
whatever taxes if i had the paper in my name instead. They said the 50EUR
charge would be for the pickup paper and not for the package itself, that is
why it was not charged by the sender. They threatened that if the money was
not paid the package would return to sender (i have these emails and could
send them to you if you want).

This story is not only mine but the same story for all the individuals who
ordered stuff through FedEx that i have contacted here.

~~~
smsm42
Wow that looks like extremely shady practice.

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apocalyptic0n3
The chrome:plugins page was removed in Chrome 57. Even their instructions are
outdated.

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nikkwong
> ...please update your browser using the simple steps provided below.

Yeah, like enabling flash is an update. Good move, Fedex.

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archeantus
ROFL

