Let’s face it, there aren’t invectives enough to hurl at the year that began described as the “Roaring Twenties,” and quickly turned into the year from hell. As far as I’m concerned, it cannot conclude fast enough. If you are among those who have suffered from the ravages of the novel Corona Virus, you have my sincere sympathies. If you have lost a friend or loved one to Covid-19, you are in my heart, and I grieve with you.
The pandemic has changed our lives in so many ways, large and small. From changing the way we work to changing the way kids will go trick-or-treating, one of those ways has to do with how we shop now. As a person who is blind, I have always made good use of any delivery services available and accessible to me, but my online shopping habits have reached a whole new level of expert as I acquaint myself with the intricacies of shopping via apps, apps, and more apps. Consequently, my garage is filled with boxes that I will need to flatten and add to my recycle bin. Delivery people have worn out my front walkway with an almost daily delivery of supplies for my business or household. But that’s nothing compared to the mountain of cardboard awaiting my post Christmas cleanup, as I add even more online holiday shopping to the mix.
Shippers were signaling changes to holiday delivery services back in August and September. Among those changes were shipping rate increases and warnings about slowdowns. I can confirm that, as of October, the slowdowns have already begun.
Consider this: Because of the restrictions imposed by the need for social distancing, retailers have announced that they planned to forego the usual Black Friday madness, that crazy chaos involving store stampedes and fistfights over prized toys or electronics, opting instead for ongoing promotions. In fact, some big-name department stores have already announced their Black Friday deals will be available throughout November and beyond, so the urgency created by the Thanksgiving weekend sales frenzy will be a non-issue.
Further, fewer people will be traveling to see their families this year. With seniors and vulnerable people at risk, along with the need to avoid gatherings of people in indoor settings, many people will be shipping gifts to their loved ones, rather than hosting Christmas festivities. Think about how many more packages that will mean moving through the shipping system.
As a small online retailer, I can easily imagine shipping is going to be a nightmare this holiday season. It’s a great convenience to get your order acknowledgement and a shipping notification, along with a tracking number for your purchase, but in many cases, a tracking number does you little good once the package has become stalled somewhere along the line.
Your first instinct might be to think that a lost or mis-routed package can be found and redirected with the all-important tracking number, but in reality, there’s not much that can be done once the package is on the move. At various points along the way, your package is scanned to confirm it has arrived at a distribution center, a relay hub, or a local postal facility. If all goes well, you can follow your item as it makes a fascinating journey across the country, which is never a straight line from point A to B.
Once your package goes off track, though, there’s very little you, or your retailer, can do. I have absolutely no control over the route a package takes once it leaves my premises. Ah, you may be thinking, but what about an investigation? There are provisions in place for hunting down lost or misdelivered boxes, right? Aww…You are so cute. What a lovely thought. But, no. The reality is that an investigation means you will probably spend, at minimum, a maddening amount of time on hold, while a cranky clerk looks over the tracking history of your item, as you have already done, and then tell you that they’ll look into it, but that they can make no guarantees. Even if they can find the location of your item, it’s not as if there is a person who can pick through the avalanche of packages and send yours on the right path to its destination. It can take months for that Gordian knot to be untangled. With the mind-boggling number of packages being handled this holiday season, you can be almost certain one or more of your items will not arrive in time to get wrapped and under the tree.
My advice is to think ahead, to shop early, to be patient, and realize that you have no control over any of this, and that if a gift is so important that you would be heartbroken if it did not reach its destination on time, you might want to invest in a door-to-door, overnight courier service.
If there were ever words of wisdom to cling to, in an effort to cope with this awful, awful year, it would have to be, “this too shall pass.” That’s scant comfort, though, when a child is disappointed Christmas morning when Santa’s sleigh was late, when you hoped to have a happy holiday with your extended family, but thanks to the pandemic, a socially distant Christmas is all you have to look forward to. With the scary proposition of interminable lines of potentially infected people at the post office or UPS Store, packages that seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth, due to the increased burden on shipping services, and porch pirates who help themselves to your gifts when they do arrive, this holiday season promises to be a less than perfect way to end a perfectly miserable year. But with some planning and patience, understanding and the realization that we are all (still) in this together, it might be the best time to focus on the reason for the season, those things that really matter, and shrug off those shipping snafus. The good news is, the 2020 nightmare is almost over.
Happy Halloween!
LL