FedEx said in a statement that an unprecedented surge of e-commerce shipments needed on the last minute was the reason behind the company's failure to deliver some Christmas packages on time.
Last week, the company blamed poor weather for the late deliveries during the busy holiday shopping season.
At the same time, FedEx attributed its shortcomings to the unexpected volume of delivery packages which they described as something that "far exceeded all previous records."
According to Craig Johnson, president of consultant firm Customer Growth Partners, shoppers had a slow start at this year's holiday season and eventually came into full force by mid-December. Although such an increase in shopping activity is seen positively by retailers, it is regarded as a new challenge to delivery companies even when consumers showed a strong shift to online shopping.
FedEx has not provided any details on why it was unable to handle the last-minute delivery surge. In contrast, United Parcel Service (UPS) said that they have completed all deliveries it had guaranteed ahead of Dec. 25.
"My take on it is UPS was much better prepared to handle it than FedEx was," said David Huckeba, a partner at Intelligent Audit, a logistics consulting company. "I just don't think they were ready or able to handle the volumes they got."
Both FedEx and UPS have struggled in the past years to deliver Christmas gifts on time. UPS reported that two years ago, they also attributed the delay to an unexpected surge in last minute shopping. This has also caused Amazon to refund customers on their shipping charges and to offer them a gift card worth $20 to compensate for the delayed orders.
In order to meet the surge, FedEx said it had to send some employees to work as real-life Santas on the first day of Christmas to clear the backlog and to ensure that most packages will be delivered to their respective destinations during the holiday rush.
The deployment of thousands of workers certainly helped in normalizing the operations, according to FedEx.
The company added that its Express unit, which promises expedited delivery to consumers, had to expand its service on Saturday, Dec. 26 to take charge of the late packages and also those that require regular delivery.
Tracking firm ShipMatrix said that around 80 percent of the packages in states from the Mid-Atlantic region, which pass through the FedEx hub at New Jersey's Newark airport, reached their respective destinations on time.
Satish Jindel, president of ShipMatrix, said that weather, and not operational problems, should be blamed.
"If God decides to dump weather challenges, the safety of FedEx workers should take priority over people getting packages on time," said Jindel.
