Why do parcels take longer in November and December?

The last two weeks of November and the first two weeks of December could be better times for every online retailer regarding shipping performance.

Not that we can help it, as we all cop plenty of customer complaints due to slower freight timeframes.

So it's the same pattern that emerges time and again each year.

You would think our skins would get thicker, but we need more.

Despite our rapid, fast order processing speed, this peak freight period each year results in nightmares with freight services across Australia.

Congestion caused by Click Frenzy, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events causes extreme congestion in parcel networks.

It gets so bad that in previous years, we have resorted to driving around the streets of Melbourne delivering free coffee to our customers where possible as they can't wait for three weeks for their parcel to travel barely 20km.

Freight networks are a series of large pipes that everybody uses.

That means we all use these same networks, and no merchant has special access, faster methods, or ways to make problems disappear.

As retailers in Australia, we are all reliant upon the primary carrier, e.g., AusPost, as the only reliable carrier delivering to all areas in the country.  

So, it's important to understand the issues of freight delays have nothing to do with what we can manage at our end.

Our packages are packed in new cartons with computer-generated labels, and we implement excellent freight processes until your package is carefully handed over to the collection vehicle.

That's right, every one of our hundreds of parcels is placed by our staff by hand into the collection vehicle for daily scanning.

The care and attention we put into each parcel is a benchmark for parcel handling, and it's the best available solution we can imagine - leaving nothing to chance.

And more to the point, we pick, pack and prepare your order within minutes, not hours or days.

Now, let's get back to what happened during this nightmare of BFCM congestion.

The big sales spikes from Black Friday and Cyber Monday expose major problems and congestion, buildup to severe choke points in the national parcel network.

Every collections driver turning up at our warehouse during late November and December is shocked at the situation in their depots and the frantic pace at which they were working.

Most commented about never seeing anything like this before, and everyone was caught off-guard.

With online shopping growing fast, it asks how merchants expect to keep their customers happy with an entire logistics industry operating without a duty of care or responsibility.

We raised this point in many previous blogs.

Including performance penalties in freight agreements is crucial because, ultimately, the merchant suffers when a customer is let down.

However, freight companies tend to hide behind their vague legal protection, which is neither fair nor reasonable for both parties involved.

As a business that prides itself on speed and efficiency, freight delays are an incredibly uncomfortable and frustrating problem for us.

Sadly, it's a daily occurrence during peak freight season, consuming an unfair slice of our resources inside the company.

Supporting customers and trying to do the right thing against a tsunami of freight mediocrity sometimes feels like a hopeless fight.

Unfortunately, we and all the other retailers cannot influence or control freight companies' behaviors.

We ask customers to take a moment to consider how and why freight delays occur and not to attack or blame us for these incidents.

It's not anything we can control.