A lot of customers showed up at the UPS center on San Bruno Avenue in San Francisco on Christmas Eve.
UPS trucks have been swarming back to headquarters with a lot of holiday and non-holiday deliveries. UPS says demand was greater than expected and that air delivery got so gummed up, many gifts will not be under the tree, but stuck in a warehouse somewhere.
Drivers have good cheer, but not all of the gifts that were supposed to be delivered by Christmas morning. UPS says for the first time it got swamped by an overwhelming number of packages.
Julie Strachan showed up at the UPS customer center in San Francisco hoping for the best. She told us, "I was expecting my husband's big Christmas gift at my office and today is the last day before Christmas so I waited around for hours and hours hoping for it to show up and it never did."
So in Strachan went to see if the present she bought was there. She's not alone. UPS says thousands of packages across the country won't make it in time for the holiday. The company blames a surge in e-commerce orders. As well as an ice storm in the south that hit as the shipping rush began. Texas residents found their packages being held hostage.
"It's terribly disappointing because we ordered these things on December 1st," said one Texas resident.
Strachan ended up leaving the UPS center empty handed. She said, "I definitely paid a little bit more to expedite the shipment for Christmas so a little bit disappointing, but she was really nice and everybody was very helpful with me. So it is what it is."
There may be one consolation -- UPS says it will honor service guarantees for air and international deliveries, which may include refunds.
