Business

FedEx in ‘fat’ fee fracas

A federal judge in Memphis unsealed internal e-mails FedEx Corp., tried to keep confidential in a lawsuit charging that the delivery company has been overcharging business customers for years by improperly assessing them residential surcharges.

One of 11 e-mails unsealed yesterday was an August 2011 communication that appears to be from a company sales executive in Scottsdale, Ariz., to an unidentified superior. In it, the sales executive said he believed FedEx, headed by CEO Fred Smith, had been “systematically overcharging our customers for residential delivery fees,” adding, “I have brought this to the attention of many people over the past five years, including one managing director and no action has been taken to address it.”

Later, he added, “My belief is we are choosing not to fix this issue because it is worth so much money to FedEx. I believe this is a widely known problem.”

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court in Memphis more than a year ago.

The suit alleges that FedEx has “known for years that it is unlawfully charging residential delivery surcharges for deliveries to non-residential addresses.”