Many happy returns

Post-Christmas shoppers roamed the Silver Lake Mall on Friday afternoon, some carrying opened gifts in crinkled shopping bags. They stood in lines at customer service desks to return or trade the gifts that had recently been removed from beneath their Christmas trees. Stores braced for the volume of returns by bulking up staffs and having employees work a little longer to cover all the bases.

"Today we've had quite a bit of people coming through, just lots of exchanges and stuff like that," said Anna Moyer, soft lines team leader of Sports Authority. "That's kind of just how it goes in general."

Moyer, of Athol, said the store designated one checkout station for returns and exchanges Thursday morning, in preparation for the day-after-Christmas rush.

"As far as actual cashiering, it's just a constant thing," she said. "There's just lots of customers shopping, using up their gift cards and things like that, so it's just really really busy."

She said it had died down Friday, but the store was still seeing a lot of business.

Jenny Montee of Hayden was shopping with her sister, niece and great-niece. She returned some clothing to Kohl's, which she said was a smooth experience.

"No questions asked," she said. "They just took it and gave me back the receipt and it was great."

Montee also did some Christmas shopping online and was expecting her purchases to arrive Jan. 3. She said she wasn't upset with the late delivery because she didn't submit the order until late in the week.

"It wasn't their fault, it was mine," she said. "I don't feel bad about it."

But that isn't quite the case with the rest of the country. While a lot of people still buy Christmas presents the old-fashioned way, many Americans did their shopping online, and they waited until the last minute to do it. Heavy spending in the final days of the mostly lackluster season sent sales up 3.5 percent between Nov. 1 and Tuesday, according to MasterCard Advisors' SpendingPulse, which tracks payments but doesn't give dollar figures.

Online shopping led the uptick, with spending up 10 percent to $38.91 billion between Nov. 2 and Sunday, research firm comScore said.

"We always have last-minute Charlies, but this year even people who normally complete shopping earlier completed shopping later," said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at market research firm NPD Group.

The late surge caught companies off guard. UPS and FedEx failed to deliver some packages by Christmas due to a combination of poor weather and overloaded systems, leaving some unhappy holiday shoppers. Amazon is offering customers with delayed shipments a refund on their shipping charges and $20 toward a future purchase. Other retailers such as Macy's said they are looking into the situation.

However, North Idaho doesn't seem to be feeling the delayed-shipping shockwave as heavily as other parts of the country.

"I was wincing coming into Thursday, but it was good," said Brandon Jank, owner of Postal Plus in Dalton Gardens. "We haven't had too many problems. There were a few that were delayed but they did manage to get them there before Christmas."

Jank attributed the few delivery setbacks to wrong addresses and apartment numbers, but he also noticed a lot of procrastination this year.

"If you wanna do it cheap, you really gotta get it done end of November, first part of December at the latest," he said.

The last-minute surge this year solidifies the increasing popularity of online shopping, which accounts for about 10 percent of sales during the last three months of the year. It also underscores the challenges that companies face delivering on the experience, particularly during the holiday shopping season that runs from the beginning of November through December.

Analysts say FedEx and UPS typically work closely with big retailers to get a sense of the volume of packages they'll handle during peak times like the holiday season. Extra flights, trucks and seasonal workers can be added if the projections are large.

But this year, David Vernon, a senior research analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said weather played a role. The early December ice storms in Dallas could have hurt operations, he said, and packages can start to accumulate. And that got compounded by a late surge in shipments, he said.

"Clearly, as a group, (they) underestimated the demand for Internet retailing during the holidays," Vernon said.

Another problem was the growing popularity of retailers offering free shipping. Amazon, for one, has a two-day free shipping offer that comes with its $79 annual Prime membership. The company said in the third week of December alone, more than 1 million people signed up for the membership.

"Frankly, the right hand wasn't talking to the left," said Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru. "The marketing teams of a lot of web retailers (offering free shipping) were not talking to the operations and supply chain teams."

The resulting delayed shipments could be a problem for shippers. UPS and FedEx did not quantify how many packages were affected but said they were a small fraction of total holiday deliveries.

"The central pillar of their business is a perception of reliability with their customers," said Jeremy Robinson-Leon, CEO of Group Gordon, a corporate and crisis PR firm. This year's snafu "just really erodes trust among customers."

Hayden Postal Annex owner and Hayden resident Ken Kile said his store didn't experience any delivery dilemmas.

"Out of hundreds of packages we've sent this season, we didn't have a problem with one," he said.

In spite of the nationwide delays, analysts say people will still shop online.

"Consumers tend to have a short memory, especially if you fast forward to another year," said Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis for comScore.

Indeed, some shoppers are taking the delays in stride. Traci Arbios, who lives in Clovis, Calif., did 90 percent of her shopping online. Most items included free shipping and everything arrived on time except one package she ordered on eBay, which was sent first-class by the U.S. Postal Service on Dec. 12. It still had not arrived on Thursday.

"Everything arrived on time except this one item," she said. "It's not going to stop me from shopping online."