Last month United Parcel Service rolled out a money-back guarantee on its standard ground delivery service to residences. Atlanta-based UPS is now issuing refunds to shippers when their packages fail to reach recipients within UPS’s specified delivery windows, which range from overnight for intrazone deliveries to eight days for coast-to-coast deliveries. The carrier has offered the guarantee to shippers of commercial ground deliveries since 1998.
“We wanted to extend to the total portfolio the commercial ground guarantee we originally offered to all of our services,” says UPS spokesperson Steve Holmes. “We feel it’s a great value proposition to customers.”
The guarantee gives UPS the one-up on its primary rival, the U.S. Postal Service, which offers delivery confirmation but no money-back guarantee on its Parcel Select and Priority Mail services. It also helps ward off competitor Federal Express, which has been steadily expanding its relatively new ground service throughout the country.