FedEx has absolutely no clue what 'economy' means.

It's made exceptionally worse because it's heading toward Christmas. Most likely the plane on the 17th was already sold and filled, they're now sending a second plane which is not full and there's a premium to put stuff on it because it costs them more to fly it than your sheet of paper accounts for.

I agree that that's likely something like the underlying factor -- they have two services, they named them in such a way that lower cost normally maps to the slower service, and in this unusual case that relationship doesn't hold.

However, OP's got a legit point that from a consumer standpoint, where someone only cares about time/money tradeoff, not internal FedEx operations, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It'd probably make sense for the "low end" option to just automatically map to the faster service in this case.
- Also to OP's credit they could just eat the price of that one shipment the name of providing a stable end reasonably priced service. The cost of all shipments would cover the cost of the average shipment plus a profit margin.
  
  It's kind of absurd to consider that there are hundreds of planes making that trip everyday, many thousands of passengers, and the best option we have is sending a letter via cargo plane.
- I think it makes the most sense to name it a little more abstractly rather than use words that have an important meaning that they can't always live up to. It's different but it reminds me of the TurboTax product called "free" that literally was in no way free and only told you that at the end, as if free didn't have a strong meaning for a product you would normally expect to pay something for. And they were required by the government to provide an actual free option, which they literally hid from search engines and didn't link to it anywhere on their website.
This piece of paper better be getting served caviar and Bordeaux on the plane in a fully reclining skybed for that price

It's 2024 and we still need to ship a piece of paper. Fuckin embarrassing.

Agreed.

It could, theoretically, be like this on purpose, not only due to things like cargo space on specific planes, but also because this sort of pricing can have a psychological effect.

People don't really know what shipping is supposed to cost, so the way they decide whether a price is good is by comparing it to other prices.

90 seems like a lot, but if it's cheaper than the "economy" rate, people might be more inclined to purchase it and feel like they got a good deal.

I agree. And the cost itself is outrageous for all of their prices. I'm literally sending two pieces of paper. Thin paper. Not even normal A4 weight. The cost in fuel would be negligible.
- In the olden days we would use a fax machine for that.
Not like there is a good way of measuring transportation and shipping fees if you arent an insider that knows how much it actually costs.
I usually expect to pay between 15-20€ if I buy <2-3kg items from the US/CA and some for stuff like JP and CN

I actually just had to send someone a passport recently and had the 12p or the 3p (15h) options. I picked the more expensive 12p and the fucking thing didn’t even show up until 2:38p anyway. Very annoying since it was around $130

I thought I wouldn't be able to get it to them by Monday, so if it gets there at some point on Friday... they won't even send me info about it until a week from now at least. I'm trying to get my passport by the inauguration, but that may not be doable. And they now have my US passport. In theory, I can get emergency travel documents.

They keep telling me to send another document and don't tell me to send it the previous time. So fucked up. Just let me send it all at once.

I'm told this is all due to the Tories.
- Well I doubt the worlds going to end if you can't leave right away. Have patience as trying to speed run the system never works. Things take time to go through. Panic is rarely your friend.

Seems like it would be cheaper to just email them a recipe for LSD so they can make their own.

But it probably would make them forget about sending the passport when they start tripping.

Wait, it's a piece of paper, they can't send it through first class mail rather than using a shipping service? Can it not be folded to put in an envelope? USPS does this for $1.65 Even if it can't be folded, USPS does this for less than like $10

USPS does it for less than $10 if you aren't in a hurry.
- First class mail is usually much faster than FedEx Economy. It is sometimes faster than many priority mail FedEx options (FedEx sucks)

I bet there is a hidden lower bound to the size of packages their Economy rate, so you are essentially paying the same rate for this Economy letter as you would for a small box. While the First Class rates have separate rates for letters vs. small boxes.

Its based on the delivery location. It's like Alaska, some shit is cheaper to pay for air freight than ground service because the ground service is basically non-existent. Their shit is based on algorithms calculating tons of shop from and ship to locations calculating what hubs they pass thru and what means they're shipping via. This shit isn't designed to come out fucky but there are always going to be anomalies.

"This shit isn’t designed to come out fucky"
- 11111one11111, 2024

Did you check at a FedEx store to see if they had other unlisted rates? Web sites often cater to the lazy for the profits. That being said, I seem to recall an overnight FedEx document envelope across the US costing around $60, so it might not have any advantage.

I did not. I just used the website. Thanks for letting me know that though.
- Also check out www.pirateship.com

A lot of times of it's a very small, light item, there are contracts that allow for expedited shipping through government channels which might reduce cost which is why the faster option is less. Probably if it were a bigger item, the faster option would be either unavailable or way more expensive and the slower would be about the same price. Similar to how in the US the first class mail is very cheap.

Also, it's probably so expensive because expediting the customs process is mostly there just for rich people to skip the line kind of thing like in many other areas of society. There's almost always a backlog in customs combined with "antiterrorism" things like radiation detection, xray, pathogen detection, poison detection, etc., that is often done at random in large batches, but with expedited they often have to test every piece rather than rooms full of stuff. And routing is similar. They also can't wait to add your package to a larger batch of things when moving between various points along the way, so a lot of things are moved in smaller batches or direct courier. All of that makes it very expensive to move something very fast, no matter how small.

FedEx is a dogshit company. Their service is dogshit. They are dogshit.

When Canada Post was still alive, this used to happen a lot when using their parcel service.

I would check all available options, because the ones you'd expect to be cheap often ended up being more expensive and take longer to get to the destination, and the cheap options don't give you perks like free parcel insurance.

OP, I also love how much you save by letting them deliver just a few hours later!

Yeah. Unfortunately, I want to get it to them as quickly as possible because I want them to get all this done before they're closed for Christmas, so I paid extra.

Facsimile?

If you mean why didn't I send a fax or a PDF, it's because the passport office wants original documents.
- Like, to keep?

In the age of cryptography

The US passport service wants to drill its own holes through it.

Did you check DHL? I had to sent papers recently and DHL was a lot cheaper and it was the same delivery timing

DHL is like a 2-hour drive away and I don’t have the time to do that, unfortunately. But thank you for the suggestion. Living in Indiana sucks. This town’s metro area has about 100,000 people, but DHL doesn’t think it’s worth having a depot here and Target has decided we’re too poor.
- damn, they don't even have a drop point?
- On the bright side of living there, Adrianne Lenker has a great song named after your state!

I use FedEx for work, and our account has heavily discounted rates for Priority services - not for Economy. That's what I assumed was happening here, until I saw that you were dealing with them as John Q Public.

Twist: It's just a blank piece of paper that says, "fuck you" on it.

I feel like this is what fax is for. Maybe I'm mistaken. Send it by fax and then send it by snail mail.

They need the original documents and the USPS is slower. Wouldn’t it be nice if they had some kind of “embassy” or “consulate” that you could just send all these documents to in the US and get a passport? Alas.
- Yeah. I made my comment before I looked at the rest of the comments and got more context. But in theory you should be able to do that at an embassy. So I dunno.

And this is before they hit you with the ol' surprise brokerage fees.

I think they get it very well, it's economically advantageous for them that you pay more on your shipping.

Tariffs, bitch. Mmmerica

i hope the brits don't end up bending knee and submitting to everything the new trumpistan demands, but i'm afraid they will, along with most of the others