
Delayed packages make your customers less likely to return. Plus, those hefty costs aren’t just a one-time financial hit. Delays shot up between 50–100% during the holiday season as a result of increased online shopping.

The coronavirus pandemic coupled with an increasingly busy holiday shopping season showed everyone just how tumultuous shipping delays could be in 2020. Every year, delayed packages cost both the consumer and the retailer about $2 billion. In the end, package delays cost retailers some serious dough. While the Evergreen boat may have seemed like a once-in-a-blue-moon situation, package delays are an unpleasant (and often frustrating) reality. That’s almost one in five packages arriving later than expected.

OK, maybe not to this extent (it’s not every day that one boat can cause $400 million in economic damage every hour ), but it’s not uncommon for packages to be delayed for days or weeks.Īccording to a study by the Inspector General, about 17% of mail volume is delayed. And it wasn’t just shipping magnates and economists that were obsessing over the news-it was all Twitter could talk about for days.Īnd while this was a serious event that spurred thousands of memes while causing delays in supply chains around the world, this isn’t a new issue in the supply chain realm. This was a piece of global news, a complete disruption of the global economy, and caused billions of dollars in losses every day. Remember a shipping boat called the Evergreen and how it blocked the Suez Canal (and thus about 10% of the global trade network) for almost a week?

Package Stuck on a Boat? Keep Customers Calm Despite Shipping Delays
