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CLEVELAND — The holiday season is often called the most wonderful time of the year, and for many it is — unless you’re waiting for a package to be delivered containing something you’ll need for the holidays. On our News 5 Facebook page Monday we asked a simple question, have you been dealing with delays on your orders ahead of Christmas?
The responses were a festivus-like public airing of the grievances. Comments were directed mainly at FedEx about packages, which, in some cases, are weeks late.
Hank Kornblut can relate to them. He owns Mister Brisket in Cleveland Heights, which is closed Mondays, but Hank was busy working on this one, preparing boxes of meat to be shipped all over the country. He uses UPS to ship out and has had no problem, but he’s waiting for one package to come in, and it’s arriving by FedEx.
“We’re at 2.5 weeks on something that’s supposed to take two days,” said Kornblut. “Fine, they’re busy, it’s the holidays it’s supposed to take a third day but no one seems to know what’s going on.”
He thought last Friday was going to be the day. “Friday they were supposed to come and then they sent me a note that they had tried to deliver, which was impossible because we were here and the store was open and no one came,” he said.
One of the reasons he wanted to make sure he was physically in the shop this day? “They sent me a notification this morning via email saying that there would be a delivery today that should be between 9:40 a.m. and 1:40 p.m.”
As we were talking in his South Taylor shop Kornblut shouted “I can’t make this up, there’s FedEx,” pointing to the delivery truck that had stopped outside his store, but as he waited for the driver to come in, they pulled off. “Where’s he going?” he asked. He went outside shouting for him to stop, but he was now out of earshot.
“It’s entirely possible we’re going to get an email now saying they attempted delivery,” he said.
It’s a frustration shared by Derek Lohr, who operates a small hot rod shop and has parts for cars he ordered weeks ago that have been sitting at a FedEx facility in Twinsburg.
“I’ve called, I’ve tracked it, I’ve tried the call centers, I’ve tried everything I could and haven’t had any luck with getting it shipped to me,” said Lohr. “Being a small business, it’s pretty crippling.”
He has customers who have ordered add-ons as Christmas presents that he’s unable to install and another whose vehicle is disassembled in his shop waiting for a part that hasn’t come.
“Usually, I don’t even start it until I get the part in, but again, we haven’t been having these issues, so I ordered a product over a week ago and the product was supposed to be shipped in on Friday of last week. We have the vehicle in our shop taken apart while we’re waiting on parts. I have a customer who is basically without a vehicle and I don’t even have confirmation it’s going to ship yet.”
His attempts to get answers have left him at a loss.
We reached out to FedEx and received a statement that acknowledges the need to improve operations on its end.
The U.S. Postal Service in Cleveland told News 5 they are not seeing any delays.
