There are several thousand irritated UPS customers in the Denver area this week. They paid for UPS’ guaranteed pre-Christmas delivery but Big Brown was unable to make good on its promise and 50,000 packages didn’t make it under the tree in time. Now UPS is saying these customers will not be getting refunds because the delay was snow-related.

“We cannot control the weather,” a UPS rep tells Denver’s channel 7 news.

However, the 7NEWS reports that neither FedEx nor USPS experienced anywhere near the same sort of problems as UPS, even though they both had to contend with the same inclement weather.

Consumerist reader MissDev gives us the scoop from the Denver area:

I live in the community that received the most snow during the storm (28″), and by 10am all of the streets (even the side streets) were well plowed and we had no problems getting around. Down in the city the side streets took a few days to be plowed, but they were still easily passable after 10″ of snow and all of the major roads were plowed by morning rush hour the day of the storm. So, I can see a delay of maybe a 1/2 day for packages, but I don’t understand why it is taking until today for UPS to catch up.

Of course, international delivery services are very complex webs that could be impacted by a lot more than just the amount of snow on the ground in the final destination. If planes are backed up in one city, that can have a massive ripple effect, so it is still possible that the delay could be weather-related, even if the streets are plowed.

No Refunds For UPS Customers [DenverChannel.com]

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