The pressure was on UPS and other delivery companies this holiday season with online shoppers and holiday gift shippers expecting packages to arrive before Christmas.
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FedEx failed to deliver some Christmas packages on time but the company is not taking all the blame for itself.
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UPS’s experience this year contrasts with rival FedEx Corp. which faced a flood of last-minute e-commerce orders and had to send out drivers on Christmas day after severe weather-related delays.
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Despite widespread criticism, FedEx appears to have had better on-time performance this holiday season than in either of the past two years, according to delivery tracking firm ShipMatrix.
As a result, many retailers informed customers free shipping would end the week before Christmas – as shipping by air would be too expensive.
Meanwhile, United Parcel Service (UPS) was much more successful in dealing with the record-breaking number of packages. Similar reasons were cited in 2013, with both companies blaming a combination of e-commerce driven last-minute volumes and bad weather for the delays.
While UPS was happy with their delivery rate by Christmas Eve, FedEx did not fare as well. Since then, UPS and others have been making improvements to help get packages to where they need to be by Christmas Eve. This year it´s FedEx turn.
Despite the fact that many clients have expressed dissatisfaction with this type of system, given that Smart Post is less steeply priced and doesn’t offer the same guarantees as regular FedEx delivery options there’s not much left to do except grin and bear it, or switch to quicker, but costlier shipping. On that day, those companies, along with the U.S. Postal Service, delivered an estimated 60 million packages, ShipMatrix said.
On some social media sites, people wrote they would be reluctant to purchase from a company that uses FedEx as their shipper.
In explaining what caused UPS’s delivery snags earlier this holiday season, chief executive David Abney said in a CNBC interview on Tuesday that there was a discrepancy between company expectations and actual package volume.
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If UPS or FedEx confirm the deliveries of packages that are missing, residents are recommended to contact the Longmont Police Department at 303-651-8501, or file an online report with a good description of the missing property. Although they did not provide an update to that estimate, MasterCard SpendingPulse said that retail spending increased about eight percent this year while online spending grew by about twenty percent. The company was able to catch up as the holiday approached.
