Adventure: Finding a Fedex Shipping Location in Tacloban

So, a few days ago, I had to go to Tacloban to mail some documents. At the risk of revealing what part of the Philippines I live in, that was the closest city that had a Fedex shipping location. At least, according to the Fedex website. In fact, the locator page now says there are seven.

On Friday, it was six.

So, I got to town. It was a long drive. I decided to stay over the night and have dinner with some friends.

In Tacloban, the local authorized shipcenters are 2Go - Express stores. There one of the local shipping companies that we’ve talked about before on this blog.

About 12:30pm, I set out to the closest Fedex location. This was the “#11 Barangay 80 Marasbaras Tacloban City 6500” location.

I grabbed a triycle taxi near the hotel. We then spent the next thirty minutes trying to find this 2Go - Express location. It should have been a ten minute trip. The tricycle driver stopped four times to ask random shop owners if they knew where the 2Go - Express store in the local Barangay is located. I noticed people pointing in a variety of different directions.

So, closed permenantly. That explains that difficulty.

If that first tricycle driver had been left to his own devices, we’d have continued driving up and down that barangay for quite a while I suspect. The first tricycle ride was 100PHP.

While looking for that first store, I noticed that there was another 2Go - Express location, according to Google Maps, south of my current location—not that far away. So, I grabbed another tricycle taxi to head south. What I didn’t bother checking was whether or not that 2Go - Express location was actually on the Fedex.com locator page—it was not.

Twenty minutes later, I got there. I walked around the whole strip mall. No 2Go - Express. Hmmmm. Walked up to a security guard at a bank branch in the strip mall. He pointed me to a little shop on the corner. The front of the shop was missing and there were six guys inside doing a complete gut and remodel. That was the 2Go - Express location. That location closed as well. To the second tricycle driver’s credit, he did drop me off at the correct location.

At this point,I had no desire to spend more time in a tricycle. So, I tried Grab. I was able to book a car—took twelve minutes for it to get to my location. I went back to the hotel to regroup. I asked the frontdesk to try calling the next location for me. They speak the local language much better than I do. After ten minutes of searching for a phone number, neither of us could find a phone number for any of the 2Go Express locations. So, I took another chance and went to the next location on the list from FedEx website with address 443 Apitong Diversion Rd.

This particular location has two listings on the Fedex location finder page that showe as being different physical locations with the same address, which is awesome.

I gave the address to a taxi driver (actual car this time) who happened to be in front of the hotel. Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in front of the 2Go - Express Tacloban regional warehouse and office—that taxi ride cost 400PHP. On an upnote, this is the first location I had visited which actually had an open business. Unfortunately, this warehouse and office setup did not have a fedex shipping center. Why would it? That was sarcasm.

So, I walked into their office. I asked which of their locations did Fedex shipping. They told me to check the fedex website—way wrong answer. I probably scared that poor young lady. Oh well. She was kind enough to call around to a couple of 2Go - Express locations and confirm where I could go to ship a Fedex package. So, I had the phone number of the taxi driver that I had driven me to the warehouse. I called him. He was back there in about fifteen minutes.

So, on to the forth 2Go - Express location of the afternoon. This time with a confirmation that the place exists, it is open, there is someone there, and, most importantly, they do Fedex shipping. The confirmed location is the “137 Avenida Veteranos St.” location.

It took about thirty minutes in traffic, but I got there 45 minutes before they closed—that taxi ride cost 500PHP. I was greeted by a cardboard cut-out sign that said “FedEx Ship Center”. It’s hard to tell sometimes, but this looked like progress.

The lady who was working the front counter told me that as far as she knew, her 2Go - Express location was the only one in Tacloban that did FedEx shipping. I don’t have a good way of confirming that, but I wouldn’t be surprised. There are a couple of locations in the government building district according to the FedEx locator page. It would make sense that those do actually have FedEx shipping capabilities. But, at this point, I don’t care enough to go find out.

It cost another 1000PHP for the taxi ride home. It took a while, it was rush hour at this point.

There isn’t much of a point to this story other than to call out that this is very typical of online information for the Philippines. Keep that in mind as you plan your errands.

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Photo by Rinson Chory on Unsplash