News / UPS stretches 'afternoon' to midnight with return to delivery guarantees

© David Tonelson

The two large US integrators have moved to bring back delivery guarantees to the parcel sector.

Within a day of each other, UPS and FedEx announced service guarantees for overnight air products and international parcel shipments.

However, at least in UPS’s case, the guarantee for afternoon deliveries has been diluted by stretching the window beyond general notions of what constitutes an afternoon – these deliveries are deemed timely if they arrive by 11:59pm, local time.

Previously the threshold was 3pm in many cases, ...