Employees of shipping giants UPS and FedEx were hard at work Thursday making deliveries that missed Santa’s sleigh. And customers were quite frustrated.
In some cases, Christmas packages reportedly weren’t expected to arrive until Friday or perhaps later.
The delays were blamed on poor weather earlier this week in parts of the country as well as overloaded systems. The holiday shopping period this year was shorter than usual, more buying was done online and Americans’ tendency to wait until the last possible second to shop probably didn’t help either.
Try explaining that to children who have anxiously awaited Santa’s arrival all year.
UPS and FedEx both apologized and said they’re working to get packages where they’re supposed to go. Amazon has offered a $20 credit and refund on shipping to some customers who were affected by the UPS delays, AP says.
Customers headed to social media outlets to express their anger. “Package was delayed in transit & not received as guaranteed. Disappointed 9 year old,” one wrote on Twitter. Another tweet said, “Really @UPS would have been better had you delivered our package yesterday like it was scheduled.” The hashtags #UPSFail and #NoSantaGiftForMySon appeared.
The companies didn’t disclose how many packages were affected, although both said the numbers were not large. AP said many parts of the country appeared to be affected.
Retailers were quick to blame the shippers, but some of them encouraged last-minute purchases. Says USA Today, “About a third of retail companies offered free or upgraded expedited shipping promotions that gave their customers until Saturday, Dec. 21, to order for Christmas delivery, and 17 percent pushed it to Monday, a National Retail Federation survey found.”
Add a Comment
Our Policy: We welcome relevant and respectful comments in order to foster healthy and informative discussions. All other comments may be removed. Comments with links are automatically held for moderation.