UPS trucks can be seen on roads across the nation Thursday as it struggles to catch up on its late Christmas deliveries. The company faced the wrath of its customers after it announced Wednesday it underestimated the surplus of holiday orders.
"We're terribly sorry," UPS spokeswoman Natalie Black told CNN.
FedEx is also playing catch-up and apologized to customers because it was unable to make some of its Christmas deliveries on time. The company said the late deliveries were "isolated incidents."
FedEx "experienced no major service disruptions in the week before Christmas despite heavy volume. Every single package is important to us, and we will continue to work directly with customers to address any isolated incidents," the company said Thursday in a statement obtained by CNN.
Both companies did acknowledge a higher than expected volume of shipments, in the hundreds of millions, because of this year's late Thanksgiving, which caused a shorter holiday shopping season, CNN reported.
"Our 300,000 team members were focused on safely delivering our customers packages this holiday season and we are proud of their efforts," FedEx spokesman Scott Fielder said in a statement, NBC News reported. "We operated with very high service levels- over 99 percent at FedEx Ground, for example- during our busiest time of the year."
UPS maintained its policy and did not make any deliveries on Christmas day. But it did have extra workers at its Louisville, Kentucky center to sort out packages to be delivered Thursday and Friday, a spokesman told the Associated Press.
Though FedEx said there were no widespread late deliveries, the company was not protected from complaining customers on its Facebook page.
"If you can't keep a promise, then don't make it. Thanks for nothing, FedEx," Jay Erikson wrote, according to NBC News.
John Church wrote that his UPS package came on time, but his FedEx package came late, and the gift inside it was broken.
"If I ever had a chance to pick, I will never use Fed Ex again!!"
