Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, UPS’s volume goes up by more than 12 million ADDITIONAL packages EACH DAY (from 20 million on an average day to over 32 million each day during the holidays). In 2020, these numbers will be inflated even more.
Their “on-time” delivery rate is typically around 98-99%. During the holiday rush season, that drops to around 96%, which still sounds great, unless you’re one of the unlucky 4% whose shipment is late. And this doesn't just affect us, this affects everybody. Even the big guys like Amazon, Target and WalMart have to deal with it.
For our customers, we'll send out around 1,000 shipments between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so there's a good chance that 40 of them will be delayed slightly by UPS. Hopefully, a delay of a day or two won't be a big deal for most of them, but it's still cause for concern for us. So try to plan ahead. We don't want anyone being disappointed.
You don't have to worry about us suspending our guarantees. We're swamped, too, during the holidays, but we still stand behind our production guarantees. We still print, bind and ship perfect bound books in 2 business days, and hard cover and coil bound books in 5 business days. So we promise to give them to UPS on time. But once it's in their hands, we can only hope and pray that you're one of the 96% that gets delivered on time.
Give yourself an extra day or two, just in case. If you can’t do that, you may still have a couple of options:
(a) upgrade to Rush or SuperRush (if available), or
(b) gamble with the chance that your books may be a day or two late.
Unfortunately, there’s not much that anybody can do. We all recognize that UPS, FedEx, and the Post Office have a Herculean job to do during the holidays, and that their “miss rate” is going to be higher.
The order was shipped on time, but the courier doesn’t guarantee a delivery date, so you’ll just have to accept that there might be a delay. Take a couple of deep breaths, and think back to what your mother used to tell you during a crisis: “It’s not the end of the world … the sun will still come up tomorrow.”