Expedited delivery during a natural disaster may or may not be available through UPS or FedEx. The summer season is especially ripe for this topic. The Midwest is flooded by the Missouri River; Hurricane Irene devastated the east coast; wildfires burn in the southwest. How do the parcel services respond when these problems occur? To each situation, a different set of circumstances dictate how package delivery will happen.

Sadly, in an era where online and mail ordering is widespread, many people may have been waiting for medications and other necessities to arrive, only to have delivery service delayed by one of the disasters happening around the states. Beyond the inconvenience and potential danger of a late package (as in the case of medication delays), shippers lose money and put off customers when their shipments do not arrive on time. If those shippers do not have a sophisticated method of retrieving funds for the shipments that arrive late, they will end up losing significant sums of money for unmet promises.

In the moment, shippers have to be savvy about their process of mailing goods. Three factors will define how the parcel is delivered: when it is shipped, by what route it is shipped, and what conditions impair the shipments’ end goal. If a business is shipping to an area in disaster (like New York, Vermont and the upper east coast during Irene) UPS or FedEx may remove the option for expedited shipping. Those who try to mail during a period of natural disaster will have limited options for a delivery guarantee. Timing is important. No company should let packages sit until the last moment.

If parcels are shipped before a disaster hits, but get stranded because of a disaster that strikes during their time en route, a delay may occur. When these delays occur, the shipper is eligible for a refund. Businesses that suspect that their packages may encounter these delays may track their packages by personal monitoring (a significant hassle) to determine when the package arrives. When they determine the delay, they can file a claim to recover the cost of that delayed parcel. Without a filed claim however, neither UPS nor FedEx will initiate restitution.

The customer is left to make his or her own claims on packages that ship before or during a delay. All of the tracking is a challenge even to well organized companies. Often, one employee could devote all his or her time to the effort of watching shipments for error and late delivery. Add to that, the difficulty of an unpredictable weather pattern, and the shipper is often left out to sea, metaphorically speaking, without a paddle.

UPS and FedEx both define their shipping policy by stating that a package will be delivered on time pending there is no circumstances out of their control, including but not limited to inclement weather and natural disasters. Most people believe that because these exceptions are written into the policies for expedited delivery, they are not due a refund. However, the agreed upon date of delivery is still UPS’s and FedEx’s to maintain. When either company does not follow through on the promised delivery, they will refund the customer’s funds.

Customers who question when they are eligible for a refund have only to ask whether the shipper allowed them to send the package by the specified route. If the package was shipped for overnight, and paid as such, no condition (save refusal stated or by absence of the customer) can lead to a withholding of the refunded amount. Because the shipping company has entered into a written agreement with the customer, they must fulfill their stated bargain. When they do not, a refund is due.

All that is left for shippers is to collect when packages arrive late. Natural disasters are a catastrophe that ravishes the land and upsets the local population. They are dangerous and understandably, impossible to avoid or work through. However, those still are not reasons for any customer to suffer the loss of funds for unfulfilled expedited delivery. Any time UPS or FedEx guarantees an arrival date and time, they are responsible to deliver or repay the lost funds, but it is the customer’s responsibility to track and file for those funds as the shipping company will not initiate a reissuing of lost sums.