UPS, Amazon offer refunds for missed Christmas deliveries

Atlanta-based UPS says it will offer refunds on shipping costs to customers who did not receive packages by Christmas as promised, The Washington Post reports. Also falling in line to offer relief to aggrieved customers are Amazon.com and FedEx.

While UPS is refunding customers’ shipping costs, Amazon took things a step further and will provide customers who failed to get their deliveries by Christmas Day $20 gift cards in addition to refunds on their shipping charges.

FedEx, which makes fewer Christmas deliveries than UPS, did not promise refunds but said it would work with people who experienced late deliveries.

UPS was hit with a mountain of criticism on Christmas Day when customers took to social media en masse to complain that deliveries were not made as pledged. The company said they underestimated the large volume of air packages they would receive between Thanksgiving and Christmas and apologized.

“We’re terribly sorry,” UPS spokeswoman Natalie Black told CNN.

Other company officials added that, “[t]he volume of air packages in our system exceeded the capacity of our network immediately preceding Christmas so some shipments were delayed.”

Memphis-based FedEx said it was delayed getting some packages to homes by Christmas, but that there “would be very few” packages not delivered on time.

Delays are being blamed on bad weather, a surge in online shopping, and a shorter Thanksgiving-to-Christmas shopping season. As sometimes happens, there was one fewer week between the two holidays this year, which may have led to the delays.

“UPS experienced heavy holiday volume and is making every effort to get packages to their destination as quickly as possible,” said a service update posted to the company’s website on Thursday. “UPS has resumed normally scheduled service on December 26. For the most-up-to date information, click here to track your specific shipment’s progress on UPS.com.”

Severe weather across the nation didn’t help either, but of course, that did little to sate thousands of customers left gift-less on the holiday.

This article originally published in the January 6, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.