Amazon and Walmart are issuing gift cards to some disgruntled customers after United Parcel Service failed to deliver gifts to their customers by Christmas, CNBC reported.
In an apology addressed to both customers and shippers, UPS acknowledged that do to problems at its fulfillment center in Louisville, KY. UPS anticipated it would handle 45 percent of retailer's holiday shipments, but could not keep up when online sales surged the week before the holiday as weather acroos much of the northern U.S. prompted many to shop from home.
Amazon said the last Prime One-Day Shipping order that was delivered in time for Christmas was placed on Dec. 23 at 10:22 p.m. PST and shipped to Carlsbad, CA. The last Local Express Delivery order that was delivered in time for Christmas ordered at 12:26 p.m. PST on Christmas Eve and delivered to Everett, WA at 3:56 p.m. PST that same day.
Amazon announced its top sellers by department for the Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve period, including:
- Sports & Outdoors: The LifeStraw Personal Water Filter; Magnesium Fire Starter and SKLZ Pro Mini Basketball Hoop. Amazon said its customers purchased enough miniature flashlights to satisfactorily light four collegiate football fields in accordance with NCAA standards and enough youth archery kits to outfit every resident of Katniss Everdeen's hometown, District 12, four times over.
- Women's Clothing: Columbia Women's Benton Springs Full-Zip Fleece Jacket; Carhartt Women's Sandstone Duck Quilt Flannel Lined Active Jacket; Columbia Women's Arcadia Rain Jacket
- Shoes: Clarks Originals Men's Desert Boot; Tamarac Men's Camper Moccasin; Bearpaw Women's Emma 10" Shearling Boot. Amazon customers purchased enough winter boots to keep everyone living in three of the coldest cities in America Duluth, Minnesota, Butte, Montana, and Watertown, South Dakota warm for the winter. Amazon said its customers purchased enough running shoes to provide a pair to every participant in the top 10 largest marathons in the world.
Amazon also announced a record-setting holiday season for Amazon Prime, the annual membership program offering unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items. More than one million customers around the world became new Prime members in the third week of December. On Amazon's peak shipping day, more Prime items were shipped worldwide than ever before. The entire 2013 holiday season was the best ever for Amazon, with more than 36.8 million items ordered worldwide on Cyber Monday, which is a record-breaking 426 items per second, and millions of customers unwrapped Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets this holiday season.
"Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and we now have tens of millions of members worldwide. They benefit from all-you-can-eat free two-day shipping on millions of eligible items and our members have a voracious appetite," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "We are extremely grateful to our customers around the world and wish everyone the very best for the coming year."
