Greg Richmond ordered two wool caps from Overland Sheepskin Co on Tuesday last week to give to his wife for Christmas, and asked for overnight delivery to ensure a pre-holiday arrival. On Friday, at home in Chicago, he was still waiting for FedEx to show up.
Two years ago, United Parcel Service Inc (UPS) found itself under fire from consumers for failing to deliver some packages in time for Christmas. Now FedEx Corp is being excoriated on social media from customers missing everything from clothes to food.
“I already wrote an e-mail to Overland asking them to find a different shipper next year,” Richmond, 51, said by telephone. “I’d be reluctant to order something from a company that uses FedEx.”
Photo: Bloomberg
FedEx is “doing everything possible” to move Christmas shipments before the holiday ends, spokesman Jim Masilak said on Friday, a day after the Memphis, Tennessee-based company warned that severe weather was disrupting service.
Drivers were making deliveries on Friday in some markets, and counters at FedEx Express stations across the US were open until 1pm for customer pickups.
Masilak declined to provide details on how many packages were still held up in the FedEx network and how many employees were on duty on Friday. On Twitter, where the hashtag #fedexfail was trending, dozens of customers complained about not getting gifts in time.
Richmond said he was told his package probably would not arrive until tomorrow, unless he wanted to drive 30 minutes to a FedEx distribution center to fetch it himself. No thanks, he said.
“I’m not driving around on Christmas morning to the suburbs trying to find a package that was supposed to be delivered on Wednesday,” Richmond said.
FedEx’s efforts to complete Christmas deliveries reflect the increasing importance of online orders as a source of holiday gifts — and the extreme time sensitivity of those shipments.
In 2013, a late e-commerce surge converged with winter weather to leave UPS unable to meet its on-time promises, triggering an avalanche of social media complaints.
The National Retail Federation forecast a 3.7 percent increase in holiday spending this year, and merchants rolled out discounts — including on shipping costs — early to grab their share. This year, 90 percent of all retailers are providing free delivery for at least some online purchases, up from 78 percent last year, according to HRC Advisory.
UPS, which refined its peak season strategy this year, said before the holiday that it was monitoring package volumes and could ask “a small fraction” of workers to sort or make deliveries on Friday.
That precaution turned out to be unnecessary, and Christmas shipments reached consumers in time, spokeswoman Peggy Gardner said on Friday, adding that UPS made deliveries late into Thursday.
“This is obviously a holiday for the company, and we want our employees to be able to enjoy it with their families,” Gardner said. “The network ran very smooth. We’re not operating today.”
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