FedEx Corp. announced that, nearly seven months after restoring its money-back guarantee on its U.S.-based air services, it would remove it for the next peak holiday shipping season.
According to a notice on FedEx’s website, effective Nov. 1, the company will suspend the guarantee on nine air services, three of which are international flights to and from the United States. The assurances will be reinstated on January 16, according to FedEx. This coincides with the predicted end of the holiday returns cycle, which has traditionally signaled the end of the peak season. The continued rise in delivery demand in the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic, on the other hand, has thrown regular parcel-shipping cycles off, requiring shipping and carriers to operate in what has been known as a “perpetual peak.”
The corporation, situated in Memphis, Tennessee, cited no justification for the guarantee suspension. Due to continued high demand and a significant labor shortage, FedEx Ground, the ground delivery business that will handle most of the domestic peak-season traffic, has struggled with service reliability for some time. However, there has been minimal discussion of the company’s aviation services due to growing traffic and labor difficulties.
FedEx reintroduced the money-back guarantees on April 6, one day after UPS Inc. (NYSE: UPS) reintroduced its money-back guarantees on domestic next-day air services and a host of foreign air services. UPS provided greater flexibility in its next-day delivery schedule by extending the deadline for such deliveries to 11:59 p.m. while still honoring its guarantee. Those deliveries were usually done at 3 p.m. before the outbreak.
FedEx and UPS are probably trying to protect themselves as much as possible from demand spikes and bad weather that could disrupt holiday delivery plans. FedEx has set Dec. 15 as the deadline for shippers to submit items to its ground delivery network, which will handle the majority of holiday deliveries, with orders expected to arrive by Christmas Eve. UPS, based in Atlanta, will not publish a universal cutoff date for accepting ground-parcel packages for the second year in a row. Instead, UPS customers will enter certain cargo information into a website calculator, calculating the shipment’s specific cutoff date.
For their expedited and air express services, both carriers offered precise cutoff deadlines. Depending on the product chosen, the time will vary. For example, items that UPS must deliver in one day must be submitted by December 23. The deadline for two-day deliveries is December 22. The deadline for three-day deliveries is December 21. According to a UPS spokeswoman, those have been the company’s standard cutoffs for specific products.
