A distraught reader sent an email to EcommerceBytes on Wednesday complaining about an online order that was taking a long time to get to him – and an article in the Wall Street Journal indicates he’s not alone.
“Here is the tracking info for a Kohl’s order I placed on 12-10-2015,” said the reader. “As of today 12-23-2015 it is still crawling my way…I will NEVER us fed-ex or shop at Kohl’s ever again!”
The tracking information showed the order information being sent to FedEx on December 12 and arriving at a FedEx SmartPost location in Michigan on the 14th – 4 days after the order was placed.
FedEx SmartPost is supposed to take between 2 – 7 days, but the reader’s package arrived at the USPS facility for “last mile delivery” pm the 23rd – 13 days after the customer had ordered the item. It’s unclear if the USPS will succeed in delivering the item before Christmas.
The Wall Street Journal published an article on Wednesday, “Some Retailers Warn of Delivery Delays and Blame FedEx.” In it, the newspaper quoted from an email Pacific Sunwear had emailed to customers on Monday, “FedEx is experiencing a backlog that is delaying standard shipments by several days or even weeks. All online merchants are affected, and not just PacSun. Destinations in the northeast United States are being impacted the most.”
But FedEx told the Wall Street Journal that it’s running operations around the clock to “accommodate additional unforeseen volume from some customers” and that if customers had shipped prior to the published deadlines, it planned to deliver them by Christmas.
Interestingly the Journal talked to a shopper who had also made a purchase from Kohl’s that didn’t make it to them in time – the shopper had ordered an item on November 28th that was supposed to have been delivered by FedEx within three to eight days. The customer received the item on December 23rd, 3 days after the buyer needed it for a family gathering, and 2 weeks after the promised deadline.
Here’s a roundup of what the big 3 shipping carriers told EcommerceBytes about holiday deadlines on Tuesday. None of them said they were experiencing chronic problems.
However, some parts of the country are now getting some bad weather conditions right before the big holiday. Here are some links to keep an eye on service delays.
