UPS - Holiday OUCH

[ByronM]

Anyone else hit with a ton of "re-scheduled" and lengthy shipments? I didn't have but one or two slow items last holiday but id say 80% of my items took on average 60-120% longer to ship than normal. We track our shipping metrics to make sure we meet our goals and for us we converted to USPS midstream and our customers couldn't be happier. (the 120% because a certain percentage went WAY over beyond the standard ship dates and landed on our exception reports)

Last year USPS was our big let down.

[BananaFish]

We use a competitor, and most, if not all, of the delays were due to the weather. I'd imagine it's the same for UPS. However, everything shipped by their "Holiday Deadline" made it on time.

For another year in a row, we were pleasantly surprised by the USPS. They had a much later deadline, and most items arrived on time as promised by their shipping commitments.

[Rugles]

Ya, we had some issues too.

Is bad weather and volume.

[Dogza]

I'm so glad to see someone posted this, I thought it was just me. The UPS delays have been HORRIBLE this year. And to top it off, the new rate increase went into effect today.

At least 4 boxes that would normally have shipped UPS had to be switched to USPS because of the new rates today. I see a lot more USPS shipments in the future..

[ByronM]

i just ran a full audit report about about 40% of our UPS orders show up as "Re-scheduled" with a delivery date 3 weeks after pickup.

Thats TERRIBLE.. I wouldn't even know where to start to find out about compensation or what exactly the issue is. This is from PA to PA of all things!

[Dogza]

[find out about compensation]

Oh, don't worry about that. A little secret that UPS and Fedex don't like to tell anyone. They don't have a time guarantee during the holiday, unlike the rest of the year. If your package is late during the month of December, you're just out of luck..

[lgn1]

Pretty good this year with UPS for Christmas Delivery. Only lost once parcel that went into customs and never came out.

I guess the customs officer needed a last minute gift :)

[ambellina]

FedEx did an excellent job for us. We gave customers a cutoff date of 12/17 to order in time for Christmas shipping, and almost everything that shipped up to the 19th made it to the customers in time. Zero delays, zero losses!

[jwurunner]

FedEx did an excellent job for us. We gave customers a cutoff date of 12/17 to order in time for Christmas shipping, and almost everything that shipped up to the 19th made it to the customers in time. Zero delays, zero losses!

We had the same success with Fedex. Orders that went UPS didn't all make it....

[ByronM]

I'm giving fedex some serious consideration again. I think they're finally getting their act together and the rates are second to none. With any moderate bulk and tie that into an Amex card i save 30% over UPS easily and they don't complain about pickups/fees and will come back multiple times a day if something needs it.

[CernyM]

We didn't have any issues with UPS this year. Even USPS did a better than average job for us.