American shoppers were expected to swarm stores during the final weekend before Christmas, buying last-minute gifts in person and avoiding adding to the delivery delays already plaguing the U.S. Postal Service. They didn’t, and the delivery backlog retailers have been warning about for months is now reaching a crescendo.

There’s “a lot of stuff all hitting at once,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners. “I think it’s past the time for creative. They have to charge people extra to get it there.”

U.S. foot traffic slumped nearly 40% at U.S. retail stores last weekend compared to the same period last year, according to data provider Sensormatic Solutions. Foot traffic during “Super Saturday” and Black Friday weekends was so low, in fact, the company has revised its forecast for the entire holiday season: It now expects in-store traffic during the six-week holiday period to fall between 34% and 36% this year, worse than the 22% to 25% drop it had been expecting earlier in the season.

With crowd-wary shoppers choosing to order online instead of in-store, the USPS is in the midst of one of its busiest holidays ever, threatening to delay millions of packages that won’t arrive in time for Christmas. On its website, the postal agency cites “unprecedented volume increases and limited employee availability due to the impacts of COVID-19.” The Washington Post reports some processing plants are now refusing to accept new mail shipments.

Creative Solutions

Retail watchers have been referring to the potential package-delivery crunch as “Shipageddon” for months, with big-box and department stores encouraging Americans since October to buy online and pick-up gift curbside instead. They continued to advertise the service this week, with Target Corp. letting shoppers order as late as 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve and still pick up their order that night.

At Best Buy Co., the company is turning to a new kind of delivery driver to get packages to customers in time: its own employees. The electronics retailer this year introduced a service where workers drop off online orders at customers’ homes, with the service now in about 85% of U.S. stores, a Best Buy spokesman said. It’s separate from the existing partnerships with Shipt, Instacart and Roadie already in place to try to meet soaring delivery demand.

‘God’s Hands’

Shoppers who got used to easy two-day shipping during the pandemic took to social media to air their concerns as packages sent through the post office appeared stuck in transit. Some shoppers lamented priority packages that appeared to go to the wrong cities for long layovers. Others asked to go pick up their boxes themselves. One popular meme depicting musician Drake reads: “I don’t know who needs to hear this. But stop trying to track that package. It’s in God’s hands now.” Phrases like “USPS delays” and “USPS gridlocked” were trending as popular Google search terms.

For retailers, especially those trying to make up for lost sales during the onset of the pandemic, getting delivery wrong isn’t an option.

“Retailers’ performance during the pandemic, and especially in the crucible of the Covid Christmas shopping season, has been nothing short of heroic,” Mike Cassidy of Signifyd wrote in a blog post earlier this month. “But retail is in for a reckoning. You can add Shipageddon and the weakness in retail’s fulfillment system to the list of trends that the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated.”