Amazon’s on-time delivery rates delivered by its van drivers saw a slump in the latest week as said consulting firm ShipMatrix on Wednesday. But the online retailer denied the same and counted its performance as much better than what being reported by the consulting firm, while going through a busiest Cyber Monday delivering record orders in an unfavorable weather condition of winter storms in some regions.
ShipMatric has said that van drivers of Amazon delivered about 93.7% of the U.S. packages on time during the week ended Dec. 7, which was below from 98.2% for the same by the company in the prior week of Thanksgiving, but Amazon called those figures by ShipMatrix as “inaccurate.”
Although, bad weather had disturbed some deliveries but impact of that was of brief nature and company worked out to quickly manage the re-balance capacity across its network, said Rena Lunak, an Amazon spokeswoman in a statement.
Retailers, especially in the United States, are competing securing sales by offering speedier delivery services and through other promotional campaigns. And for Amazon, this holiday season is likely to be a crucial to test its very own delivery operations, as the world’s leading online retailer launched one-day delivery service in April, just few months before cancelation of home and air delivery arrangement agreement by FedEx Corp.
Amazon van drivers deliver larger portion of Amazon’s own shipments, often managed through company’s local hubs based mainly in urban areas. Between the Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, Amazon van drivers are likely to be delivering about 275 million packages, which is double the number of packages delivered by the online retailer last year, according to ShipMatrix.
Amazon’s decision to speed up delivery time just months before the commencement of busiest time of the year has prompted some analysts to warn that the decision would result in building up a lot of pressure on the company.