Commentary: The E-Commerce Road has its Ups and Downs
Deborah Lockridge
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My personal experience with e-commerce this year was frustrating — and it started even before Black Friday.
In mid-November, an order from a clothing store never arrived at our house; apparently it was delivered to the wrong address, somehow “refused” and sent back to the shipper.
In December, I got a postcard from UPS notifying me that they were holding an item someone had sent to my P.O. box. Luckily, I called rather than traipsing over to the UPS facility — they had returned it to the sender only two days after the date on the postcard because they didn’t have enough room.
Numerous gifts we ordered through Amazon Prime were late. One apparently was lost in limbo between UPS and the Post Office, so we re-ordered it — only to get a notice that it, too, was delayed.
So I wasn’t surprised to read, a week before Christmas, that UPS was experiencing shipping delays due to the surge in online shopping.
UPS drivers aren’t happy about the workload, with the Teamsters complaining that this is the third year in a row UPS has underestimated demand. I’ve seen postal drivers operating unsafely, obviously in a hurry to get those deliveries done.
In short, “the peak e-commerce season is stretching the limits of the nation’s freight and package handling capabilities,” as the transportation analysts at Stifel put it.
FedEx, on the other hand, reportedly is handling the surge better. In reporting an 11% gain in net profit for the quarter ending Nov. 30, Chairman and CEO Fred Smith said the company handled this year’s peak season because of its close work with shippers to project demand.
Nevertheless, as Bloomberg notes, “deliveries to homes are more costly and complicated than taking goods to business sites.” UPS and FedEx are looking for solutions, from charging more for customers …Read the rest of this story
