A missing electric bike in Atlanta turned into a months-long tour of modern customer support, with FedEx, a bike company, financial institutions and even the local police department routing a consumer through automated systems while the money stayed gone.
WIRED contributor Dillon Thompson reported that he ordered an ebike costing nearly $2,000 after his fiancée’s separately purchased bike had arrived. FedEx later sent him a delivery confirmation saying the package had reached his address and had been signed for. Thompson said he was home at the time and found no bike outside his apartment. The signature record used the initials “M.M.,” which he said did not match him, his fiancée or anyone in the building.
The missing package was only the first failure. Thompson said his attempts to fix it repeatedly ran into chatbots and automated phone systems, including at FedEx, the retailer, his bank, his credit card company and the Atlanta Police Department. The practical effect was familiar: no single institution accepted the full problem, and each handoff made the customer do more unpaid labor.
Automation met a messy dispute
FedEx opened a claim, according to Thompson, and later sent an automated email saying the bike was missing. The company told him to contact the shipper for any compensation. The bike company, after Thompson reached a person by phone, got FedEx to cover shipping costs, which Thompson said amounted to about one-tenth of what he paid.
Thompson said his bank and card company also sent him through automated processes before a person told him they could not help because the loss had occurred while FedEx handled the delivery. Nearly three months after the delivery notice, Thompson reported that FedEx had not found the bike and that he remained out around $1,700.
The Atlanta Police Department told Thompson that it had dispatched an officer to his home after he missed a callback and said it would send one again. The department also confirmed, according to Thompson, that the call he missed came from an operator rather than an officer, and that returning the call sends people back into the chatbot-run non-emergency line.
The broader customer-service shift
The episode lands amid a broader corporate push to replace or reduce human support work with AI. Gartner said in an April survey that 31 percent of customer service leaders had either reduced staff or planned to do so because of AI adoption. Gartner also said most surveyed leaders were moving human agents into different roles or adding responsibilities rather than only cutting jobs.
Verizon CEO Dan Schulman recently told Bloomberg that AI is likely to replace a “large percentage” of the company’s customer service work, calling the sector highly exposed to the technology.
Consumers are not exactly cheering. A May report covering consumers in the US, UK and Canada found that 59 percent were frustrated with AI customer service agents, while 85 percent said they preferred speaking with a person.
Ryan Hamilton, an Emory University marketing professor who studies consumer psychology, told Thompson that AI has intensified “sludge,” the term for friction that discourages customers from pursuing help. Hamilton said companies may adopt agentic AI tools without fully grasping the harm to service, or may knowingly accept the trade-off.
Ravi Dhar, a Yale professor and director of the school’s Center for Customer Insights, told Thompson that companies may keep pushing AI because executives face pressure from investors to show an AI strategy and a return on spending.
FedEx told Thompson it uses AI and digital tools for faster self-service on everyday questions, while acknowledging that complex situations need “human care and deeper support.” The company said it is refining its processes so customers can get help “seamlessly and swiftly.” In this case, the process did not produce the bike or most of the refund.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
