In the run-up to St Nicholas and Christmas, 475 thousand parcels were delivered late. This accounted for 6 per cent of deliveries, says research firm Q&A Research & Consultancy. That's a 15 per cent drop compared to last year.
The agency asked 5,000 Dutch people about their experiences in delivering online orders. In this, the final verdict on past holidays was better than in 2015. According to Q&A, the drop in the number of parcels delivered late can be attributed to the extra day carriers had to deliver orders. Indeed, Christmas Day fell on a Sunday in 2016. Consumers would often place their orders on a Sunday or a Monday, giving online shops almost a week to deliver the parcel.
According to Frank Quix, director of Q&A, online shops have been consciously working on on-time delivery in recent years. "Especially to children, it is of course impossible to explain if a gift is missing on Christmas Eve, like: 'yes, St Nicholas is late'," Quix told NOS.
Quix does not want to name which kind of online shops often went wrong. "Large companies with many customers and many orders are of course more likely to be mentioned, but I have the impression that it is still mainly the medium-sized and small online shops that make mistakes."
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