Report: Jacksonville shipping delays 'considerably worse' than other cities

A Jacksonville woman says a package still hasn’t been delivered three weeks after she paid for overnight shipping.

Her story is just one complaint in an Action News Jax investigation into shipping delays at UPS.

Action News Jax first reported the shipping delays Saturday. Several families have since shared their concerns about gifts getting to their homes on time.

“I just want to scream,” Nyredia Boatwright told Action News Jax.

She says she’s fed up and furious after waiting for a package from UPS for more than two weeks.

“They're just saying it's Christmastime. It's busy,” she said.

Eric Gibbs is one of the lucky folks who left a Jacksonville UPS with a package.

He said it was chaos inside the customer center Monday.

“It got crazy in there,” Gibbs said. “A lot of people were yelling and screaming at one point.”

UPS expects to deliver 750 million packages nationwide this holiday season.

Another customer in Jacksonville said she’s been waiting three weeks for a package after she paid for overnight shipping.

“It's really upsetting because now I have to explain to someone who is overseas that they can't have their Christmas present,” Ryan Dewitt said.

UPS sent Action News Jax a statement that says some cities suffered temporary delays because of the volume during Cyber Week, but that Jacksonville wasn’t among them.

LateShipment.com provides city-specific statistics on UPS shipping times.

The website says Jacksonville is performing considerably worse with as much as 29 percent of UPS shipments affected.

In Orlando, people are facing delays in shipments around 19 percent. In Miami, the website says delays are around 22 percent.

LateShipment sent Action News Jax the following statement:

"Florida, compared to a lot of other states around the country, is interesting. Even though service levels have suffered during this busy season, just like other parts of the US, UPS seems to be doing significantly worse here. In fact, with regards to Ground Shipments; which is the most common shipping type, we see close to 30% of packages being delivered late, which is a massive percentage of delays and among the highest, we have seen. Other UPS shipping types are also seeing really high failure rates, worse than what is observed in other parts of the country.

Extrapolating data down to specific cities like Jacksonville and Orlando, which are medium-sized metropolitan areas, we see volumes up across the board by around 2X times, but the delay situation being different on a city by city basis. A region like Orlando seems to be doing better than the concerning 30% delays we see in other parts of Florida and at this point in time, seems to be facing some delays in around 19% of shipments headed there. Jacksonville, on the other hand, seems to be having considerably worse numbers with as much as 29% of shipments being affected. This is worse than even larger metros areas like Miami, which seems to have around 22% of packages being affected. Such differences between cities are to be expected, even though they are located in the same state, different cities often have different last mile delivery networks and other variables such as load, infrastructure, package distribution etc. which can cause considerable variations in on time delivery rates between them. We have been closely following data from across the country and even though we are still in the middle of the season, it is still too early to draw conclusive results considering the data we have now. It would not be surprising to eventually figure out that Florida was among the few top states that were worst affected by UPS delays this holiday season, and that is certainly not good news for consumers located there.

On the bright side though, we currently do not see businesses that function out of cities like Jacksonville being affected. Pickups and shipments headed out of the state are still relatively unaffected, and if the packages these businesses ship are mostly headed to parts of the country which are not considerably affected by delays, their customers might not be affected much at this point."

A UPS spokesperson sent Action News Jax this statement:

"It's hard for me to comment on the status of individual shipments. The only thing I can do is ask for the name of the customer, and then get the tracking number and other information and then have our Customer Service team research the status of that shipment. If you can provide me the contact information for the customers in question, I'd be happy to have our team look into the status of individual deliveries.

As I mentioned earlier, we are handling roughly 750 million packages between Thanksgiving and New Year's, and the vast majority of packages we handle during the holidays will be delivered in accordance with the service commitments for the specified time-in-transit.

We had some specific areas of the country that were suffering temporary delays because of the greater-than-expected volume of packages given to us by retailers and other shippers during Cyber Week, but Jacksonville wasn't among them.

If people are waiting on a package, they can check the status using the tracking number at UPS.com. Or they can call 1-800-742-5877 (1-800-PICK-UPS®) and speak to a representative who may be able to give them more information about the status of the delivery.

We will start planning for the upcoming holiday shipping season in January, just as soon as this season is over. We literally have teams of people who do nothing but work on the holiday season planning all year long. A big part of that planning means talking to our shippers (which, of course, includes the big online retailers) and getting feedback from them about what worked and what didn't. Beginning every January, we conduct an in-depth review of our performance during the recently completed holiday shipping season - and start implementing changes for the next holiday season. Given that we haven't finished the current holiday season, it's too early to discuss what changes we might make for next year.

Cox Media Group