UPS And FedEx Buckled Under Holiday Load

Moral of the story: Don't wait until the last possible minute to order stuff and then bitch when it doesn't get there when you want it to because every other idiot is doing the same thing. Buy early, ship early, avoid the rush and everyone wins.
 
Phoenix333 said:
Moral of the story: Don't wait until the last possible minute to order stuff and then bitch when it doesn't get there when you want it to because every other idiot is doing the same thing. Buy early, ship early, avoid the rush and everyone wins.
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the reason people are pissed is that Amazon (or another reseller) guaranteed delivery by Christmas...ordering at the last minute is one thing but it's the retailer at fault here hence the reason why so many refunds on shipping were offered...I ordered an item on December 17th...if I had known it wouldn't get there by X-Mas I would have just chosen a faster delivery method
 
aeonrevolution said:
You gotta realize the % in volume jump that occurs during this time of the year is utterly ridiculous. On a very small scale to give example, a 4 hour sort near St Louis will do about 150,000 packages. After Thanksgiving that number jumps up to 400,000.

Dallas was the big hub where most people got their stuff lost or delayed. I knew on the 23rd they were estimated to be 1.5 million packages behind. :eek: :eek:

Amazon forecasted like 180,000 per day and it ended up in reality being like 550-600k.

I dunno. I guess because I see the stuff every day I don't get flustered. I think people need to just calm down and know this time of the year sucks balls for us.
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This is correct. The build up is based on company projections. When someone like Amazon tells you 180k per day for instance, and then triples that, what you have built up, including the your extra room above that, just gets eaten up. That is one retailer, every single one seemed to do it too.

FighterAce124 said:
The shipping companies may not care right now, but what do you think all those massive retailers are going to do? They aren't going to eat the millions in shipping and freebies they give out, they're going to turn around and stick their hand into UPS/FedEx's pocket book to cover it.

UPS claims they had too many packages to handle. Their ONLY MAIN JOB is to deliver packages. Their name is United Parcel Service. If a company that specializes in shipping items (indeed, that is their name) cant ship normally, they're doing something wrong. USPS had less issues this year.

I'm tired of companies not being held liable. You cant ship stuff as a shipping company? There should be no customers left. But no, nobody is willing to put the effort needed to say "fuck you" to UPS and the like. Think about it - if Amazon were to switch shipping companies, how many millions per week do you think that would hurt? I promise you the company who lost them would quickly get their shit right when they lose an account like that - this isn't Bob's Computers, this is a customer who likely makes up entire percentage points of their customer base.
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USPS had plenty of issues, they buckled too. You don't hear about it because their contracts with UPS/FedEx means that when they fall behind on packages UPS/FedEx take over final delivery. Imagine thousands of packages a day that the USPS was supposed to be delivering are now back in the UPS/FedEx system in each city. That is a ton of volume.

MrGuvernment said:
I am on this side really, sure they should have systems in place to deal with the increase in traffic, from years past they should be seeing the growth rates and have projections coming in all years round.

There should be little excuse for losing anything this day in digital, everything is tracked, age, but i guess it happens.

I ordered $4k in server hear and it arrived Dec 26th to Costa Rica via UPS...ordered Dec 10th...So i cant complain..
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There were plans in place. You can only build up so much based on the projections from the retailers you service. When those projections turn out to mean absolutely nothing and you've rented just about every rental truck in the area from Uhaul/Budget/Penske between UPS and FedEx, you come down to man hours. DOT limits the hours people can work. Everyone here maxed every week since Thanksgiving, that includes peak hires.

savagepagan said:
I would advise UPS/FEDEX that during the holidays, they may want to consider delivering on Saturdays to avoid getting crushed again.
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Both do deliver on Saturdays. FedEx Franchise people (FedEx Ground) will even deliver on Sundays to try and stay ahead.

In the end UPS/FedEx are ridiculously huge operations. Sure there were weather issues and some other things, but they got blown out. That should give you some sense of the scale of shipping that went on. More ramping up could have helped, but like any business it's based off the projections, and when all the projections you are given are wrong, and wrong by massive amounts, it's impossible to have anything go smoothly.
 
You are full of shit with your post regarding the USPS delivering packages,if any packages that got delayed it was Fed Ex/UPS since THEY give US the packages that are originally ordered through them(Neither is a "last mile" company). So any delays are THEIR FAULT.
 
Hop-Scotch said:
USPS had plenty of issues, they buckled too. You don't hear about it because their contracts with UPS/FedEx means that when they fall behind on packages UPS/FedEx take over final delivery. Imagine thousands of packages a day that the USPS was supposed to be delivering are now back in the UPS/FedEx system in each city. That is a ton of volume.
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I am a contractor for FedEx Ground during the holiday season and we've never delivered USPS packages... on the contrary we have a service where USPS handles final delivery. There are agreements in place where USPS can offload packages onto FedEx containers for airport-to-airport transport but final delivery is always USPS.
 
All our routes were manageable and on time this year... much lighter than last year. Just stating to preempt any hate directed at me ;-)
 
melteye said:
I am a contractor for FedEx Ground during the holiday season and we've never delivered USPS packages... on the contrary we have a service where USPS handles final delivery. There are agreements in place where USPS can offload packages onto FedEx containers for airport-to-airport transport but final delivery is always USPS.
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From time to time over the years, I've had USPS packages delivered by UPS/FedEx. Rare but it does happen (I live in NYC).
 
OldDeadOne said:
You are full of shit with your post regarding the USPS delivering packages,if any packages that got delayed it was Fed Ex/UPS since THEY give US the packages that are originally ordered through them(Neither is a "last mile" company). So any delays are THEIR FAULT.
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I've been a pilot for Fedex for 10 years. I was flying all month through both Indianapolis and Memphis and I will tell you one thing as I was there and experienced it. The weather was absolutely brutal: snow, ice, freezing rain, and extremely out of season cold temps which effects everyone involved in sorting packages (rampers, sorters, mechanics, de-icing, etc.). We were, on average, roughly 2-3 hours late every night. So before you go pointing fingers at all of us who busted our ass all month saying it's THEIR FAULT, you might want to account for how the system works and how weather affects aircraft. Pretty tough to fly with freezing rain and heavy snow.
 
capt_zman said:
I've been a pilot for Fedex for 10 years. I was flying all month through both Indianapolis and Memphis and I will tell you one thing as I was there and experienced it. The weather was absolutely brutal: snow, ice, freezing rain, and extremely out of season cold temps which effects everyone involved in sorting packages (rampers, sorters, mechanics, de-icing, etc.). We were, on average, roughly 2-3 hours late every night. So before you go pointing fingers at all of us who busted our ass all month saying it's THEIR FAULT, you might want to account for how the system works and how weather affects aircraft. Pretty tough to fly with freezing rain and heavy snow.
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Did anyone force FedEx or UPS to start a business delivering packages? No. Likewise I don't remember forcing them to take my money. In addition to that I didn't create the delivery date. They did. Most people don't need to know how the system works because we aren't paying them for that.We are paying them to take a box from one location to another.

There was snow and ice? Well doesn't that happen in the Winter time? Or are you saying it was a surprise? Likewise Internet sales around Chirstmas time have been increasing year on year by about 20% give or take for the past 5 years. I doubt it's increased much beyond that in 2013. The official numbers should be out soon though.

The point being is that if they can take my money then they can plan accordingly to deliver the package when they said they would deliver it. Consumers don't get to blame the weather as a reason they don't pay a bill after receiving a service. "Well you know Verizon I wish I could pay my bill but the ice, snow, and rain were just awful 2 weeks ago. I worked my ass off though. So do you think you could be a little understanding?" Yeah OK.
 
kac77 said:
Did anyone force FedEx or UPS to start a business delivering packages? No. Likewise I don't remember forcing them to take my money. In addition to that I didn't create the delivery date. They did. Most people don't need to know how the system works because we aren't paying them for that.We are paying them to take a box from one location to another.

There was snow and ice? Well doesn't that happen in the Winter time? Or are you saying it was a surprise? Likewise Internet sales around Chirstmas time have been increasing year on year by about 20% give or take for the past 5 years. I doubt it's increased much beyond that in 2013. The official numbers should be out soon though.

The point being is that if they can take my money then they can plan accordingly to deliver the package when they said they would deliver it. Consumers don't get to blame the weather as a reason they don't pay a bill after receiving a service. "Well you know Verizon I wish I could pay my bill but the ice, snow, and rain were just awful 2 weeks ago. I worked my ass off though. So do you think you could be a little understanding?" Yeah OK.
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The two companies in question employ TENS OF THOUSANDS of people who are a lot smarter than you that have been doing this business for over 40 years. To suggest that they don't plan accordingly for the busiest part of the year is just plain ignorant.

And just to reiterate regarding winter. We have over 200 arrivals and departures through Memphis on a nightly basis. In the event of a snow or ice storm, it's pretty obvious that the schedule is going to be delayed. Like it or not, that's the truth.
 
capt_zman said:
The two companies in question employ TENS OF THOUSANDS of people who are a lot smarter than you that have been doing this business for over 40 years. To suggest that they don't plan accordingly for the busiest part of the year is just plain ignorant.
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This just one gigantic straw man argument that refuses to deal with reality. Did I question their intelligence? Nope. Second, factually you can't say they "planned accordingly" when the outcome wasn't desired by the company or the clients. Unless the plan was to fail. You can't fail at something and say they planned accordingly. You could say "We did the best we could given the current circumstances." That's acceptable.

capt_zman said:
And just to reiterate regarding winter. We have over 200 arrivals and departures through Memphis on a nightly basis. In the event of a snow or ice storm, it's pretty obvious that the schedule is going to be delayed. Like it or not, that's the truth.
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Just to reiterate we have winter every year and I'm pretty sure it snows somewhere every time we reach winter. Also, if someone is paying 2-Day and they get 8-Day service logically they didn't get what they paid for. (We don't need a car analogy for something this obvious.)
 
This isn't rocket science.

UPS and Fedex did not encounter apocalyptic levels of ueber-shipments this season nor was there a planetary asteroid perfect storm weather event... there's always going to be a little bit of weather conditions especially during the winter, and the ramp up in online shopping has been quite steady.

UPS and Fedex management simply tried to maximize their profits by leaving hiring the absolute minimum amount of seasonal employees that MAY have been able to meet demand under perfect conditions.

They screwed up by not investing in more help or setting expectations for shipping time with their customers, and they deserve all the flack they are getting now for missing Christmas shipments.

Those of us impacted should pressure the businesses that promised and missed their advertised promised delivery dates as much as possible, and allow those businesses to retrieve their financial penalities from the shipper. If it hurts UPS/FedEx's pocket book enough to affect the bottom line, then next season they will fix the issue. Otherwise, the business decision on their part was a wise one that they will repeat again and again as long as it translates into higher profits with no negative downfall.
 
I feel very fortunate this Christmas season that all our packages were delivered on time here on the west coast. I do agree that they probably gambled and hired the bare minimum amount of people to help with the holiday season and got burnt.

Off topic: The thing that bothers me is how expensive UPS ground is. I sent a package to AL from CA and it was about $20 for 5 pounds. that is crazy ridiculous. That is about double what I used to pay. Will definitely hit up the USPS next time.
 
Ducman69 said:
UPS and Fedex management simply tried to maximize their profits by leaving hiring the absolute minimum amount of seasonal employees that MAY have been able to meet demand under perfect conditions.

They screwed up by not investing in more help or setting expectations for shipping time with their customers, and they deserve all the flack they are getting now for missing Christmas shipments.
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FedEx is a franchise who's routes are owned by contractors. Hiring for final destination is done by these contractors and the difference between enough drivers and too many drivers (even one too many) is the difference between profit and loss. Route owners are fined for every late and lost package and hours must be strictly followed. It's often a balancing act. They aren't rolling in the money as you make it sound ;-)
 
tungt88 said:
From time to time over the years, I've had USPS packages delivered by UPS/FedEx. Rare but it does happen (I live in NYC).
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My last sentence was a bit absolute. I was speaking from my own personal experience as a seasonal contractor but I ended the second sentence with "always" for some reason :p
 
melteye said:
FedEx is a franchise who's routes are owned by contractors. Hiring for final destination is done by these contractors and the difference between enough drivers and too many drivers (even one too many) is the difference between profit and loss. Route owners are fined for every late and lost package and hours must be strictly followed. It's often a balancing act. They aren't rolling in the money as you make it sound ;-)
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Sounds like a broken business model or they gambled and loss big time this year. Ignoring weather, (heavy snow/fog happens every year) are apologists on here trying to tell us none of this is UPS/Fedex's Fault?
 
pcjunkie said:
Sounds like a broken business model or they gambled and loss big time this year. Ignoring weather, (heavy snow/fog happens every year) are apologists on here trying to tell us none of this is UPS/Fedex's Fault?
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I'm just speaking on behalf of the FedEx drivers. Upper management is another beast entirely and I can't/won't comment on that aspect :D As far as I know UPS is managed much differently (UPS drivers work for UPS, whereas FedEx drivers won't work directly for FedEx.) I was throwing the tiny bit of information I had into the conversation.
 
melteye said:
I'm just speaking on behalf of the FedEx drivers. Upper management is another beast entirely and I can't/won't comment on that aspect :D As far as I know UPS is managed much differently (UPS drivers work for UPS, whereas FedEx drivers won't work directly for FedEx.) I was throwing the tiny bit of information I had into the conversation.
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Yeah, in no way was I blaming any drivers/warehouse workers for this...
 
capt_zman said:
I've been a pilot for Fedex for 10 years. I was flying all month through both Indianapolis and Memphis and I will tell you one thing as I was there and experienced it. The weather was absolutely brutal: snow, ice, freezing rain, and extremely out of season cold temps which effects everyone involved in sorting packages (rampers, sorters, mechanics, de-icing, etc.). We were, on average, roughly 2-3 hours late every night. So before you go pointing fingers at all of us who busted our ass all month saying it's THEIR FAULT, you might want to account for how the system works and how weather affects aircraft. Pretty tough to fly with freezing rain and heavy snow.
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thanks for your hard work! I enjoy getting my packages.

Now everyone settle the fuck down. You didn't get your shit on time, christmas isn't about items, it's about spending time with your family. Unless fedex was delivering your family member there's no reason to get mad.

To put it this way. You paid $5 for someone to carry your package across the country and deliver it to your doorstep. Five dollars!!!! Try doing that yourself for $5.
 
Here's a new flash for all the haters: if you live in the Northeast, especially BOS, your packages are going to be really late the next couple of days.

Yeah it's winter and shit happens, but it must be our fault, right?

12-18 inches of snow tomorrow/Fri in case you didn't know.

Have this same storm in MEM or Louisville, and your packages are going to be whole hell of a lot later, just like in December.
 
OldDeadOne said:
You are full of shit with your post regarding the USPS delivering packages,if any packages that got delayed it was Fed Ex/UPS since THEY give US the packages that are originally ordered through them(Neither is a "last mile" company). So any delays are THEIR FAULT.
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UPS SurePost. USPS, at least in this area, handles final delivery. They couldn't handle it, all of those packages where back in the UPS system for final delivery. That is a ton of volume no matter how you look at it that wasn't supposed to be in that system past a certain point.

I said in the end of my post that UPS and FedEx got blown out. Could more ramping up have helped? Yes, but it's all off of projections, and those projections come from companies like Amazon etc, and they blew it too, they were orders of magnitude off. Throw in the free air shipping at the last minute. You can only put so much in a plane, there are only so many planes, and they can only land and take off so fast. Then tack weather on to it.
 
Well my package I ordered last year still isn't here. Funny everything that got sent USPS got here and early. A little bit of snow and UPS won't deliver 10 miles away from their distribution center. Adverse weather conditions my arse, so much for free market private competition.
 
I just remembered, yeah, I never got the package that my brother had ordered from amazon as a gift for my daughter. I guess UPS lost it.
 
I feel it is safe to assume that all the whiners in this thread know nothing about businesses, and how to run one.
 
Well you know what happens when you assume and generalize. I mean how dare we criticize a company that fails to meet expectations! It’s not like they are in the business of delivering packages, or they have this thing called weather forecasts, or knew about holiday demand, or had the foresight to prepare for emergencies, or know that they kind of have an image problem to deal with now. How dare we criticize them for repeatedly failing to make amends to all of that. No it’s not their incompetence, it’s that we are ALL a bunch of whiners. I guess if we don’t like it we’ll have to move to another country where there’s actually a free market and real business competition.

Seriously though in my case I am not even talking about on time. It’s now a week outside of the original delivery window, I am in the biggest US metro area, there’s not been a snowflake on the ground for more than a day. And yet mere miles away UPS can’t deliver because it’s a little cold, poor things. Meanwhile the Post Office has been delivering stuff nonstop this whole time. Nothing personal though, I just want to exercise my right to vent if that is allowed, because I waited for long enough for my package to get here.
 
So how deep is the snow and ice in FL, TX, LA, CA, MO, etc..that has been delaying these shipments for a week or more?
 
darkstarcow said:
I feel it is safe to assume that all the whiners in this thread know nothing about businesses, and how to run one.
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Yeah, I hate how it gets cold and sometimes snows in the winter. Totally, unpredictable. I hate when the holidays completely sneak up on me. Sometimes I completely forget what month I am in.

Give me a fucking break.
 
closers said:
Well you know what happens when you assume and generalize. I mean how dare we criticize a company that fails to meet expectations! It’s not like they are in the business of delivering packages, or they have this thing called weather forecasts, or knew about holiday demand, or had the foresight to prepare for emergencies, or know that they kind of have an image problem to deal with now. How dare we criticize them for repeatedly failing to make amends to all of that. No it’s not their incompetence, it’s that we are ALL a bunch of whiners. I guess if we don’t like it we’ll have to move to another country where there’s actually a free market and real business competition.

Seriously though in my case I am not even talking about on time. It’s now a week outside of the original delivery window, I am in the biggest US metro area, there’s not been a snowflake on the ground for more than a day. And yet mere miles away UPS can’t deliver because it’s a little cold, poor things. Meanwhile the Post Office has been delivering stuff nonstop this whole time. Nothing personal though, I just want to exercise my right to vent if that is allowed, because I waited for long enough for my package to get here.
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techie81 said:
Yeah, I hate how it gets cold and sometimes snows in the winter. Totally, unpredictable. I hate when the holidays completely sneak up on me. Sometimes I completely forget what month I am in.

Give me a fucking break.
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You both completely ignore that the companies staffed and built up expecting a certain number of packages, and that number was greatly exceeded.

When you run a business, you don't invest money into hiring, equipment, etc... without a good reason. If your sales spike during the holidays, you base financial decisions off of previous years sales/trends/projections, which is what UPS/FEDEX did. If they did what you whiners keep spouting, and they only used 70% of their increased capacity, guess what, they just lost a metric shit ton of money.
 
darkstarcow:We deliver EVEN if it's -42 or 3 feet of snow and GO places and DELIVER where UPS/FEDEX can't and get fedex/ups handoffs LOL This year we got a fuckton of parcels and we DELIVERED them all,needless to say I bet next holiday season,both companies are going to be shit out of luck with more people going USPS than ever before. So bullshit on you.
 
darkstarcow said:
You both completely ignore that the companies staffed and built up expecting a certain number of packages, and that number was greatly exceeded.

When you run a business, you don't invest money into hiring, equipment, etc... without a good reason. If your sales spike during the holidays, you base financial decisions off of previous years sales/trends/projections, which is what UPS/FEDEX did. If they did what you whiners keep spouting, and they only used 70% of their increased capacity, guess what, they just lost a metric shit ton of money.
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Guess what, by under staffing and under delivering so horribly they just lost a shit ton of money...who would have thought that online purchases, which means a tom more shipments would increase every year? Weird huh....
 
Somehow I've managed to get all my packages in plenty of time... even the ones I ordered the week before Christmas with free shipping as last minute gifts. Damn SurePost shipping that transferred to the USPS and sat there for 3 days while regular FedEx packages that hit the FedEx sorting center the same day showed up the next day. Anyways, they got here by Christmas Eve, and even if they didn't they were for adults so I had boxes with "It's coming" notes ready to go.

Personally, I prefer FedEx/UPS anyways, since my post man has this habit of flagging things as delivered and not putting it in the mailbox until 1-2 days later. Filed reports several times and all USPS does is say "we'll look into it", while I see him driving like a bat-out-of-hell in a residential area. Even sent a video of him trying to do a u-turn in the street and going up over the curb into someone's yard... and he is still running the route 1 month later.

I will say that a large part of the fault lies on the retailers. Their estimates appear to have been so far off, it is like giving you a project at work with a 1-month deadline and then telling you the next day that it needs to be one in 3 days. Just isn't going to happen and sets you up to look like the bad guy. Could FedEx/UPS/USPS do better.. sure. Lost or mis-routed packages have no excuse and they are fully to blame for those. But they had to go off of projections and forcasts given to them by the retailers. To say that they should have known it was going to be busier... well the retailers should have known to give better estimates then and people should have known that ordering something 2nd-day during the busiest part of the year... probably wasn't going to make it.
 
Hey guess what just got my packages. Apparently UPS was out in force today (Saturday) to make amends after the local facility was getting some flak for their non-delivery for the non-adverse weather conditions recently. I am sure glad stonewall corporate bend-your-back-over apologists aren't running UPS, but there might be a job for y'all in the cable monopoly! Guess I still don't have any idea how businesses run though, boohoo. If you worked for my company and missed projections by 20% you would be out of work faster than you can read this message.
 
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