Slashdot Mirror
Surge In Online Orders Overwhelms UPS Christmas Deliveries
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Reuters reports that the high volume of online orders of holiday packages overwhelmed shipping and logistics company UPS delaying the arrival of Christmas presents around the globe and sending angry consumers to social media to vent. The company projected 132 million deliveries last week "and obviously we exceeded that," said UPS spokeswoman Natalie Black without disclosing how many packages had been sent. "For now, UPS is really focused on delivering the remaining packages. You might not see trucks, but people are working." Asked why the company underestimated the volume of air packages it would receive, Black noted that previous severe weather in the Dallas area had already created a backlog. Then came "excess holiday volume" during a compressed time frame, since the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas was shorter than usual this year. Amazon.com responded with an email to affected customers offering shipping refunds and $20 gift cards to compensate. Packages shipped via UPS for Amazon.com by Prime customers, who pay $79 a year for two-day shipping, may be eligible for additional refunds. Amazon's stated policy for missed deliveries is to offer a free one-month extension of Prime. Frustrated consumers took to social media, with some complaining that gifts purchased for their children would not arrive in time to make it under the tree by Christmas morning. '"A lot of these employees keep saying 'It's the weather' or 'It's some kind of a backlog,' said Barry Tesh. 'Well then why, all the way up until the 23rd, were they offering next-day delivery? That guaranteed delivery was 80% of my decision to buy the gift."' However, others on social media urged shoppers to be more appreciative of the delivery company's work during the holiday season. 'While others take vacation and time off in December, remember we aren't allowed ever to be off in December. Ever,' said a 20-year veteran UPS driver on the UPS Facebook page. 'So when you see your family and complain that your package is held up, everyone who moves your package is working and doesn't get the Xmas experience you get, Be thankful for that.'"
First, The UPS "guaranteed on-schedule delivery" already includes the following:
The guarantee does not apply to UPS shipments that are delayed due to causes beyond UPS's control, including, but not limited to, the following:
[SNIPPED some basic things, strikes, acts of god, government, customs, etc.]
disruptions in air or ground transportation networks, such as weather phenomena; and natural disasters.
The guarantee does not apply to UPS 2nd Day Air A.M., UPS 2nd Day Air, UPS 3 Day Select, and UPS Ground shipments that are picked up or scheduled to be delivered between December 12 and December 25.
http://www.ups.com/media/en/terms_service_us.pdf
Can you read that? Christmas is excluded. The whole Christmas season is excluded. ...and they're still offering compensation.
Good guy UPS.
Oh hey guys, look, another armchair quarterback on the internet who is absolutely certain that FedEx and UPS, with their multi-billion dollar operations, missed some obvious, easy, and cheap solution to this problem! Color me shocked.
The reason bean counters don't like paying for "surge capacity" is because "surge capacity" is often left unused, because it is insurance for the rare-to-never case where things completely shit the bed. FedEx and UPS *have* surge capacity built in - what happened this year is that their surge capacity wasn't able to keep up with the actual volume of packages funneling through their systems. Three days before Christmas is a bit too late to begin arranging 'surge capacity' for the holiday season - there's not much volume available for hire at that point, and the planes are frequently not where you want them to be, too, which means they'd have to scramble to fly pilots around to the planes all over the country (or world) where they're parked, fly them to their destination to pick up their cargo, and do this in the space of 12-24 hours in order to get the capacity in place to make a difference for holiday shipments. Then they also need the capacity on the ground in their receiving facilities and delivery trucks to be able to ship everything on time, as well.
When your business is built-on "just in time" delivery, a late surge and weather-based delays can really fuck up your transportation chain no matter how hard you plan. In most cases, it's better to eat some penalties and freebies to angry customers receiving late packages than it is to spend millions or billions scrambling at the last minute to get every last package there on time.