UPS rebounded from a stumble early in the holiday season, posting an on-time rate for ground package delivery of 93.2% for the second week of December, according to data from software developer ShipMatrix Inc.
The shipping carrier’s on-time delivery rate fell to 91% the week of Cyber Monday (Nov. 29-Dec. 5), down from 97% a year ago, according to ShipMatrix. In the second week of December 2014, the UPS on-time delivery rate was 96.5%, ShipMatrix says. United Parcel Service Inc. says it had brief and isolated shipping glitches in the days following Thanksgiving weekend because of volume surges at certain hubs that a spokesman would not identify. UPS has projected volume to be up about 10% this year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, to 630 million parcels from 572 million last year.
FedEx Ground also posted a slight gain for the second week of the month to 95.3% from 95.0% the week before, says Satish Jindel, founder of SJ Consulting Group, a sister company of ShipMatrix. This year’s rate in the second week (Dec. 6-12) is a slight improvement from the same period last year when the on-time rate was 94.8%, Jindel says.
The second week in December typically has heavy e-commerce order volume following Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) and the days that follow. ShipMatrix’s analysis was based on a study of millions of packages delivered from more than 1,000 shipper customers.
While the ShipMatrix study suggests the carriers delivered more parcels on time the second week of December, online shoppers tell a different story.
On Dec. 11, the percentage of online buyers reporting that all items in their order were delivered on time was slightly above 91.5%, an uptick from the day before when it was slightly below 91.5%, according to Bizrate Insights, which looked at results from more than 218,000 shoppers surveyed about their online deliveries made Dec. 1-15. The on-time delivery rate dropped to a little above 90.0% on Dec. 12 and stayed relatively flat before registering at 89.9% on Dec. 15, the survey finds.
In a survey covering Dec. 1-10, more than 130,000 shoppers were asked if they received their order on time. On Dec. 1, the percentage of online buyers reporting that all items in their order were delivered on time was just under 93.5%, but by Dec. 10, that percentage had slipped to just under 91.5%. Bizrate, a division of retail marketing vendor Connexity, did not name online retailers or their shipping carriers.
“Even though retailers and carriers all expected ecommerce growth this year over last year, on-time delivery—as defined by the customer—is down 1.7% on Dec. 15, 2015, from the same date last year,” says Hayley Silver, vice president of Bizrate Insights. “Retailers and carriers started stronger in December 2015 over 2014, but then dropped under the weight of the holiday orders. Furthermore, at the time these orders were placed, many retailers had not adjusted customer expectations of when they would receive their orders.”
Cyber Monday was the largest ever U.S. online sales day, with $3.07 billion in web purchases, according to Adobe Inc.’s Adobe Digital Index. And shippers have more rushes to contend with. U.S. e-commerce sales on Dec. 7, at $1.92 billion, exceeded those on Thanksgiving Day ($1.73 billion), making it the fourth-highest online sales day of the year. Dec. 14 is expected by Adobe to be the third-best online selling day this year, with $1.95 billion in sales.
The small changes in the on-time delivery rates mean little at this time in the holiday season, Jindel says. “People are buying this stuff for the 24th of December. Even if it’s a day or two late, it’s not a big deal at this point.”
Top500Guide.com data shows 413 of Internet Retailer’s Top 1000 online retailers in North America use UPS as their shipping carrier. FedEx is the shipping carrier to 307 of the Top 1000 e-retailers.
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