As shipping delays rise, be a successful Santa
Think local shopping, pickup of items at store
CHICAGO – With less than a week until Christmas, anyone who’s still scouring the internet for the perfect gift may want to get in the car and head for a store or start making IOUS.
Record online sales have led to the crush of packages at shipping companies and the U.S. Postal Service that was predicted a month ago. As a result, merchants of all sizes are issuing warnings and apologies to consumers, who are turning to social media to complain.
Nike, Ulta and Barnes & Noble say it’s already too late for free shipping. Macy’s is spotlighting products that are eligible for pickup or same-day delivery and arrive in a Macy’s bag. H&M says any new orders won’t arrive by Christmas.
With the clock ticking, retailers like Kohl’s and Target are encouraging shoppers to place orders for store pickup rather than risk a late delivery.
Gift and greeting card shop Inkling, in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, has stopped taking orders that require shipping. Packages shipped through the Postal Service were starting to take longer than three or four days to deliver, and some customers, who mostly live within the city, began calling with concerns, said employee Sean Coen.
“We just went ahead and shut it off. I don’t want people to be disappointed,” he said.
Scott Friedland, owner of Timeless Toys in Chicago, used to ship most items customers bought online through the Postal Service, until deliveries that used to take three days recently stretched to two or three weeks.
He has been encouraging customers to pick UPS, whose shipments have been arriving in about three days and typically cost about $3 or $4 more. “To get it there in time for Christmas, that’s not a huge price jump,” Friedland said.
The Postal Service acknowledged temporary delays because of a “historic record of holiday volume” and challenges such as a shortage of staff due to COVID-19, in a statement this week.
U.S. online holiday sales are expected to hit $184 billion this holiday season, up 30% from last year, according to Adobe Analytics.
Early in the season, shipping companies mostly kept up, according to ShipMatrix, which analyzes shipping data. Between Nov. 22 and Dec. 5, Fedex, UPS and the Postal Service delivered 94.9%, 96.3% and 92.8%, respectively, of packages on time. All three delivered more packages on time than they did during the same period last year.
That still means about 2.5 million packages could take an extra day or two to arrive, said Shipmatrix President Satish Jindel.
With companies turning away packages they don’t have the capacity to handle, volume at the Postal Service has increased, and so have the delays, said Carson Krieg, co-founder of Convey, a company that tracks shipping data and helps retailers manage deliveries.
The Postal Service delivered about 79% of packages on time during the week that ended Dec. 3 and just 60% during the week ending Dec. 10, according to Convey.
UPS delivered about 83% of packages on time during the week ending Dec. 10, while Fedex delivered 66% on time, down from 75% a week earlier, according to Convey.
Convey’s data track whether packages arrive on the initial estimated delivery date that shoppers see in a package tracking email, while Shipmatrix looks at whether a carrier delivered within the window it promised the retailer. A package could miss the estimated date but still arrive on time.
The Postal Service has extended the hours for package delivery and is delivering packages on Sundays in more areas.
UPS and Fedex advertised 100,000 and 70,000 seasonal jobs in September, respectively, and both say they are doing more weekend deliveries.
Even so, “any retailer that can provide that bricks-and-mortar presence is probably going to be your best bet now that we’re past that Dec. 15 date,” Krieg said.
Services that let customers shop online for pickup or delivery from nearby stores only help if the item is in stock at a nearby store.
Some retailers are trying to give nearby online shoppers a wider range of merchandise. Nordstrom shows people willing to pick up an order the following day items at several nearby stores and will deliver purchases to the store that’s most convenient for the customer, spokeswoman Caroline Mattingly said in an email.
Target and Walmart, which already offered same-day delivery and curbside pickup, expanded the range of items customers can order online and receive the same day. Target also expects to ship millions of items from stores rather than warehouses, which still requires shipping but shortens the distance.
Others are trying to make shopping for pickup or same-day delivery more convenient. Ulta lets shoppers pick up online orders before stores open at most stores that offer curbside pickup. Best Buy has extended pickup hours. Old Navy and Athleta have service hubs where shoppers can pick up online orders apart from standard checkout lines.
Barnes & Noble and J.C. Penney, meanwhile, are offering discounts on at least some items when shoppers agree to pick up orders at a store.