Surge in holiday online shopping affects deliveries

The increase in online shopping this holiday season have left many US customers wondering why their Christmas purchased failed to be delivered on time.
Online retailers struggled to meet delivery commitments as last 

order days were pushed much closer to Christmas and shoppers took full advantage of retailer delivery promises, according to reports.

A surge in online orders in recent weeks combined with bad weather and under-estimates of just how popular online shopping would be on the part of carriers meant delivery companies were unable to cope with the increase in parcels.

UPS unable to

deliver orders in time for Christmas

The Wall Street Journal reported that UPS decided late Tuesday it wouldn't be able to deliver some goods to customers in time for Christmas, as a surge in late shopping overwhelmed its system.

Around 45 percent of parcels in the US go via UPS and the company had expected 7.75 million items to enter its air network on Monday. "The volume of air packages in the UPS system did exceed capacity as demand was much greater than our forecast," spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg told WSJ.

UPS’s rival FedEx is also reported to have had problems delivering some parcels in time.

But retailers themselves were also at fault, observers said. Eric Best, CEO of Mercent Corp, which helps facilitate e-sales for retailers, said some who had been left with excess inventory in the past could have under-estimated demand this year.

With online sales jumping by 37 percent year-on-year in the last shopping weekend before Christmas (IBM Digital Analytics.), such an approach would have caused problems.

Image: Delivery man