That’s not true at all. If it were true, it would be impossible to tender a package on Friday and have it delivered on Monday.
Go to the UPS Time and Cost Calculator. In the left hand column, select United States, use Columbus as the origin city with zip code 43202. For the destination city, select United States, Chicago, 60601. For destination type, use Residential Address. For shipping date use May 31, 2013 (or a future Friday). Then click the UPDATE button. In the right panel, under UPS Ground, it will show the guaranteed delivery date as Monday (unless Monday is a holiday). (Deliveries from Columbus OH to Chicago IL are guaranteed one business day.)
What is true is that weekends and holidays are not counted as transit time for the purposes of the UPS Delivery Guarantee. But packages are most certainly moving during the weekend if necessary.
Fedex does not ‘hold’ packages. Expedited shipping options such as two day or next day do get priority when it comes to loading trucks so if their is limited space a larger standard ground package might have to wait around for the next load.
There is some ethical quandaries retailers must deal with as their customers often have no clue how shipping actually works. Fedex and UPS with take whatever amount of money you give them even if it’s more than necessary to meet your shipping needs.
If a customer orders a widget and selects next day service even though they are already in a one day ship zone, how should it be handled? A. Charge the customer for next day air and ship next day air, giving UPS or Fedex the extra money. B. Charge the customer for Next day air and ship it one day ground pocketing the extra money. C. Refund the customer the extra shipping paid and ship the package one day ground. D. Something else.
That does not happen with FedEx. FedEx Ground and FedEx Express are two separate companies. Ground and Express packages would never be placed on the same truck together. Ground and Express have completely separate sorting, transportation, and delivery networks. They do not share hubs or sorting facilities.
That is one of the major complaints FedEx customers have: If you have UPS Ground and UPS Air packages to ship, one driver comes by and picks them both up. If you have FedEx Ground and FedEx Express packages to ship, you have to wait for two different trucks to come by. Your Express driver cannot accept a Ground package (or vice versa).
I regularly do business with one company that is within the next-day UPS Ground delivery area. The only shipping options they offer are standard or 2nd Day Air. If you choose standard, they take up to a week to ship and use Smart Post when they do ship. If you choose 2nd Day Air, they actually pay for 2nd Day Air service and ship the next day. I wish they would offer a service where they ship the next day and use UPS Ground.
where are you getting this from? Excess capacity costs money.
This. I have quite a few years in airfreight spanning a number of major companies. This is how it works. There is all kinds of crossover between day and night flights and truck routes to various hubs and secondary carriers.
Awww crap. I’m going to go with :Originally Posted by Laggard
When i was in shipping UPS’ policy was to deliver it as soon as possible regardless of the given delivery date. Fed Ex on the other hand had a policy of waiting until the delivery date to deliver."
I’ve been reading all of the reasons a package wouldn’t be delivered early, but none make sense based on my experience this week.
I ordered two packages from a company over the weekend for three day delivery. They were ordered separately, so there were two shipments. On Monday I ordered two packages from Amazon using two day Prime delivery. All four packages arrived at local hubs yesterday, three at a hub about 30 miles away, one at a hub within ten miles. The three day packages arrived at least two hours before the two day packages. The two day packages are out for delivery, the three day - even though they arrived at the sort facility earlier and one is at the closest facility, remain sitting at the warehouse.
So they are all going to the same address, they are all approximately the same size, take up the same space, use the same driver, etc. One three day is at a sort facility really close. The only explanation I can see is that they are intentionally being delayed.
How about they arrive in different locations in the facility, via different means. The sorting and delivery scheduling algorithms have different priority settings. Space is limited on trucks and higher priority package get the space first.
Logistics are complex, and lots of factors go into getting packages on trucks.
No, they’re not being delayed, they are prioritized based on what you paid for. If there was space on the truck and they were left off to purposely make delivery slower then they would have been delayed. If you pay for truck delivery and FedEx decides not to put your package on a plane you could argue that it was being delayed, but you’d be wrong for the same reason.
FedEx never delivers anything early I’ve had packages get into Orlando 3 days before they’re due date and they sit there and u call fedex to what the hold up is since it’s already here and they say it’s not due for delivery and they won’t even let u pick up ur before it’s due date. Ups on the other hand will deliver the package either it be a surepost package or a regular package they will be delivering that package before it’s due date ups and usps is a little more reliable then fedex
I know distances are less of a problem here in the UK, but the above philosophy is exactly what happens here. I worked for a haulier which was part of a national delivery system. They had two main rates - Next day and 3 day, and, for a premium, before 10am next day. Every evening, all the day’s collections were sent to a distribution hub where they were sent on to the firm that would deliver them. Nothing was delayed at this point except that the hub would send next day goods ahead of 3 day. The hub would normally be completely empty by 8am.
Any delay would happen at the final distribution point. Scheduling trucks, taking account of all the delivery constraints is an art but in my personal experience, more than half the 3 day deliveries were delivered next day and most by the following day. I should add that there were financial penalties for failing to meet deadlines.
I ordered a new electric kettle from Amazon yesterday morning and paid 2.75GBP for first class - the 1 to 2 business day option. I expected delivery on Monday. I had an email this morning (Saturday) telling me to expect delivery today. I could have paid 9GBP for the express service and had the same delivery time.
Actually that’s quite false. A Anecdote is indeed a data point. Maybe not the best data, but it is data.
And, since many times I went out of my house for under half-and hour, to return and find a Fedex or UPS “delivery notice” on my door in lieu of my package, it’s my theory that the UPS guy waits in the bushes until he sees me leave.
I have sent stuff to the USA and sometimes it arrives two days after mailing, or seven or ten. I’m told this is because the local postal service puts stuff on planes at a set rate when they have enough, so sometimes you get lucky and your package is the last one in and sometimes unlucky and the first one in.
But all are delivered at about the same time, hmmmmmmmmmmm.
By arrival I do not mean delivery, arrival is based off the delivery confirmation# showing when it arrives in the USA, they are all however delivered at about the same amount of days from shipping. Even if one arrived 5 days early.
Sometimes they even send it on a little journey out of state just to make sure it won’t get to you until the last possible day of the estimate. At least I can’t see any other reason they’d send my package from Detroit, just a few miles from me, down toward Ohio for a couple days like they did once. Maybe the package wanted to go to Cedar Point?
