How UPS plans to recover from Cyber Monday shipping delays
- UPS forecasted to
- deliver 750 million packages
- globally during this year’s peak season, but the carrier is struggling to keep up with demand. To combat the capacity failure, UPS is mandating drivers work a 70-hour workweek — whether they like it or not. Record-breaking eCommerce sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday mean backbreaking workweeks for UPS employees. “This is the third consecutive year in which Cyber Monday purchases have overwhelmed the company’s capacity to deliver packages for the holidays.”
- Jim Hoffa, Teamsters General President, isn’t pleased with
- UPS’ operational oversight
- Hoffa wrote David Abney, CEO of UPS, and said, “I fail to understand how the company neglected to take the steps necessary to ensure that it had a sufficient number of trained workers available to meet the demand generated by the digital economy. This is, after all, the third consecutive year in which Cyber Monday purchases have overwhelmed the company’s capacity to deliver packages for the holidays.”
Will retailers respond to UPS’ failure to deliver?
The consecutive years of holiday shipping delays could be one reason Amazon is rumored to be launching their own delivery service. Logistics need to occur at lightning speed, especially around the holidays. Amazon has constructed and tested a delivery service that grants them more ownership over their supply chain operations and greater flexibility as it oversees pickup of packages from warehouses of third-party merchants selling goods on Amazon.com and their delivery to customers’ homes. Amazon Prime customers are furious that their purchases are arriving late and taking to Twitter to express their woes which could motivate the consumer-centric Amazon to find alternative methods for package delivery.
Will more retailers follow Amazon’s example to take greater control of their deliveries due to logistic providers shipping flops?
Amazon sellers sound off on UPS holiday delays
- Multiple Amazon sellers
- claim UPS has “dropped the ball” this holiday season. One seller replied to a thread with UPS’ updated scheduled delivery date for the shipments while other sellers shared their that upset customers are leaving permanent negative reviews as a result of late shipments. UPS doesn’t expect to miss Christmas deadlines because of the delays, but its lack of on-time delivery causes some to speculate the shipping giants’ ability to perform.

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