Residential surcharges: FedEx Ground or Home Delivery?

Direct-to-consumer orders mostly go to homes. FedEx has two services that get mixed up:

• FedEx Ground: meant for business addresses
• FedEx Home Delivery: meant for residential addresses

What we ran into

Buying Home Delivery through the API for an address not marked as residential is refused outright:

The other way round, a business address sent by Home Delivery is re-routed by FedEx according to what the address really is, and charged for it.

The carrier decides what an address is

You can quote an address as business, but if the carrier classifies it as residential, the difference shows up on the carrier's invoice at the end of the month (residential surcharges, address corrections).

What to do

1. Say whether the address is residential when you quote, so the quote matches the invoice
2. A company name, opening hours or an office building usually means a business address
3. Every month, check the carrier's invoice line by line against what you paid when buying the label. Look at each parcel, not the net total: one parcel 3 dollars over and one 19 under nets to 16 and hides both