UPS to customers: Some holiday deliveries will be late this year

Theo Thimou | December 5th, 2017

Team Clark is adamant that we will never write content influenced by or paid for by an advertiser. To support our work, we do make money from some links to companies and deals on our site. Learn more about our guarantee here.

The packages you ordered online during Cyber Monday may be a few days late arriving if they’re coming via UPS.

After an “unprecedented” spike in online orders during Cyber Monday, Big Brown is apparently struggling with the logistics of its logistics business!

Report: Big Brown struggling to keep up

According to the Wall Street Journal, UPS has already notified workers at more than 100 delivery centers that it may raise driver work hours to 70 hours over an eight-day period. That would be up from 60 hours over seven days.

The reason? An unspecified number of packages that UPS picked up on November 27 and 28 are requiring another day or two in transit as the company struggles to keep up with the holiday rush, according to top UPS brass.

This delivery pinch, which should work itself out later this week, is the result of a record-breaking Cyber Monday sales pop.

Sales were up 17% from 2016 to cross the $6.6 billion mark this year, according to Adobe estimates.

Shipment software provider ShipMatrix estimates that 89.2% of parcels shipped through UPS Express last week were delivered on time. Competitor FedEx, meanwhile, had a 99.4% on-time delivery rate during the same period.

Amazon will compensate you if your packages are late

Meanwhile, a lot of people don’t know this, but if you order something from Amazon and your package shows up late, you can get compensation.

The e-commerce giant may make it up to you by extending your Prime membership for a month (if applicable) or possibly refunding shipping fees.

There are two ways to play this: You can either contact Amazon yourself via email, phone or live chat to haggle over the details or you can let the power of technology do it for you.

When it comes to the latter approach, you’ll want to download the free Paribus app. Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up: Just register your Amazon purchase by connecting your email account to the inbox where your shopping receipts are sent
2. Track: Paribus will track your receipt
3. Monitor: Their proprietary algorithm determines if you could be owed money
4. File: If the app finds potential savings, it lets you know
5. Get credit: Paribus streamlines the claim process to make it as easy as possible to get your money back

Paribus also works with a wide variety of other retailers, too.