FedEx is paying people to use Adobe Flash for Office Print service

By Gabe Carey Published March 25, 2017

FedEx Van delivering shipments on a city street. — Erik Leenaars / Flickr

In a world where HTML5 has asserted dominance over virtually every other markup language across the web, most companies wouldn’t be caught using anything else. From social media websites like Facebook to video streaming services like YouTube, almost everyone has abandoned Adobe Flash in favor of the HTML 5 standard.

Everyone except FedEx that is, as the courier delivery company is now offering customers of its Office Print customization service a $5 voucher to be applied to orders exceeding $30 if they install and enable Adobe Flash Player in their browsers. This news was spotted by Shawn Knight over at TechSpot who found that as an incentive for being patient enough to endure the arduous Adobe Flash install process.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

As soon as you enter the FedEx Office web page without Flash installed, you’ll be greeted by a page that not only tells you how to get Flash in every major browser, but does so in addition to providing you with the discount code “FLA726.” Enter the code at checkout and, as the appreciative message at the top of the screen indicates, you’ll get a $5 voucher towards your next purchase upwards of $30.

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Instead of devising an HTML 5-compatible website, FedEx has decided that a courtesy discount for the inconvenience of downloading Flash is the more financially savvy route. So if you’re in a position where you need to design and print signs, banners, posters, and more from the comfort of your PC’s web browser, it may not be possible to do so without first downloading Flash, but at least there’s the prospect of a discount to consider.

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All in all, this could be considered a lazy workaround for a company more than sizable enough to rework its website to support HTML 5, but then again why should FedEx waste the resources when Flash is still up and running, albeit with a few extra steps involved? Even if Microsoft appears to want nothing to do with it, Flash still lives on (for now).

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

A freelancer for Digital Trends, Gabe Carey has been covering the intersection of video games and technology since he was 16…

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