📦 Peak Season Shipping Delays: Why Parcels Take Longer After Black Friday
The last two weeks of November and the first two weeks of December are a consistent annual challenge for every online retailer. Despite our best efforts to process orders with speed, this period inevitably results in slower freight timeframes across Australia.
We understand the frustration of slow delivery. This is a recurring pattern, and the root cause lies in the severe congestion caused by major sales events: Click Frenzy, Black Friday (BF), and Cyber Monday (CM).
The Network Bottleneck: BFCM Congestion
Think of the national freight networks as a series of large, interconnected pipes. During the BFCM sales spikes, the sheer volume of parcels far exceeds the capacity of these pipes, leading to severe choke points and network failure.
We, and every other Australian retailer, rely heavily on the primary carriers (e.g., AusPost) because they are often the only reliable carrier delivering to all areas in the country. This means no merchant—no matter how big—has special access, faster methods, or ways to make the problems disappear.
This problem is external, impacting us all equally:
| The Problem | The Impact |
| Sales Volume Spike | Freight networks are suddenly overloaded far beyond normal capacity. |
| Infrastructure Strain | Depots and sorting centers cannot process parcels fast enough. |
| Lack of Accountability | Freight agreements often hide behind vague legal protection, leaving the retailer—and you—to suffer the delay. |
What We Can and Cannot Control
It is crucial for our customers to understand the difference between the steps we manage and the external logistics issues.
✅ Our Internal Speed Guarantee
We pride ourselves on our internal processes, which are designed to eliminate any internal delay:
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Pick & Pack Speed: Your order is picked, packed, and prepared within minutes, not hours or days.
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Quality Control: Parcels are packed in new cartons with computer-generated labels.
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Daily Handover: Every one of our hundreds of parcels is placed by our staff by hand into the collection vehicle for daily scanning.
Our goal is simple: We leave nothing to chance at our end, ensuring your order is out of our warehouse and into the carrier’s hands faster than the competition.
❌ The External Reality: Carrier Accountability
Once the package is in the collection vehicle, our control ends. Slower freight times are not due to what we can manage.
We have previously taken extreme steps to mitigate the delays—including personally driving around Melbourne delivering coffee to customers when parcels were stuck for weeks traveling barely 20km.
However, we cannot influence or control the carriers’ behaviour. This problem will persist until the logistics industry operates with a greater duty of care and responsibility. We believe performance penalties must be built into freight agreements to ensure the merchant (and customer) is not continually let down.
We kindly ask customers to take a moment to consider why freight delays occur.
While we feel your frustration, we ask that you not attack or blame us for incidents that are outside of our management and influence.
We are fighting the same battle you are.
