The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
HOW DID UPS DO WITH ITS HOLIDAY DELIVERIES?
High volume of online shopping created record demand.
Veronica Morales is among the many Atlanta area residents who took to social media to complain about UPS customer service over the holiday break.
She said that a package she sent to a niece in New York didn’t arrive before Christmas as promised. Representatives of the Sandy Springs-based company told Morales on Tuesday that the package was on the truck for delivery.
Morales, who lives in Smyrna and works for a company that ships 3-D printers to jewelry makers, said several of her clients also did not receive crucial equipment during the holiday crunch. One of those deliveries arrived nearly a week behind schedule although the customer paid for two-day delivery, Morales said.
“The package made it to Atlanta, and it was there for six days,” she said. “And she is only two miles down the road from the hub.”
Other customers complained specifically about the UPS service
center in Forest Park. They said packages routed through that center didn’t show up as promised, and efforts to retrieve them in person resulted in long waits and few answers.
A company spokesman acknowledged Tuesday that there had been some issues in the region. He said they were not widespread.
“The vast majority of UPS shipments have been, and continue to be, delivered on time,” Glenn Zaccara said via email. “There were a few markets where package volume came in stronger than expected, including in Atlanta. In those locations, we quickly augmented our operations staff with support employees.”
UPS won’t provide final numbers about how it fared during the holiday season until fourth-quarter earnings are released in February.
The company also had issues with delayed deliveries at the beginning of the holiday shopping season. It reported that deliveries were taking an additional one to two days because of heavy volumes of online shopping.
By mid-December, however, UPS said that things were back to normal.
“Black Friday and Cyber Week sales in the U.S. were record-breaking and UPS delivered more than originally forecast as a result of such strong e-commerce demand,” the company said in a Dec. 13 news release. “UPS customers can be confident UPS is taking the necessary steps to ensure the network operates with its customary dependable performance throughout the remainder of the holiday season.”
The company said it expected to deliver about 750 million packages between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, an increase of 40 million compared with 2016. In addition to its usual seasonal hiring blitz, UPS updated its facilities to handle more packages.
Q: I have a follow-up question to the Dec. 15 answer about congressional retirement. Is the formula for congressional retirement the same as for government employees? —Richard Criswell, Monroe
A: Members of Congress are eligible for one of two pension systems, both of which are based on formulas like other federal government employees. Representatives and senators who were first elected in or after 1984 are automatically enrolled in the Federal Employees Retirement System. Those elected before 1984 were enrolled in the older Civil Service Retirement System and could choose to stick with that program or switch to the FERS.
“Because of the uncertain tenure of congressional service, FERS was originally designed, as CSRS had been, to provide a larger benefit for each year of service to members of Congress and congressional staff than to most other federal employees,” according to the Congressional Research Service.
That meant that until the passage of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, members and congressional staff could become eligible for retirement annuities at an earlier age and with fewer years of service than most federal employees, but they also paid a higher percentage of salary for their retirement benefits than other federal employees. Now, members and congressional staff first covered by FERS after Dec. 31, 2012, use the same benefit accrual rate and contribute the same percentage of their salary to the retirement system as other federal employees.
Today’s pension benefits formula for members entering FERS after Dec. 31, 2012, equals the product of their average annual salary for the three consecutive years of highest pay, their years of service and a 1 percent accrual rate for the first 20 years of service. (Annual benefits = High-3 salary x years of service x the .01 accrual rate). The accrual rate changes slightly after 20 years of service and is higher for those members who entered FERS before 2012 — 1.7 percent — and for members still using the CSRS — 2.5 percent.