him up. he says he drifted to an island after something went wrong with his boat. meet the first robot to fly as an airline passenger. the owners claim it was cheaper than shipping charges from l.a.. they say they hope that the robot will do jobs too dangerous for humans like flying coach. bottom of the hour. top of the news next and the latest on the horrific school bombing in pakistan. óqoqúúñ@
when i say some, reportedly for air and international customers and u.p.s. says some customers who paid for two-day delivery or faster may get refunds of the shipping charges as well. maybe next year, retailers might reconsider guaranteeing delivery they can t control. yeah, right. look at the increase in online sale than drove so much of the issue. speaking of online sales, amazon reporting a surge in sales of the premium service, amazon prime. that s receipt tailor s 79 a year free two-day shipping membership business and it s had a record christmas. more than 1 million customers signed up for prime membership during third week of december in time for christmas, and that was, by the way, the last week to qualify for guaranteed holiday delivery. and it means prime service could have at least 20 million members around the world now. and i should also say the growth in the prime membership business is important for amazon, it helps generate repeat business for the company and member g
of its orders on time, basically pointing the finger at ups and amazon is compensating customers with $20 gift cards as well as refunds on shipping charges and this morning fedex did release a statement saying it processed about 275 million packages during the shott shorter holida shopping season. nbc s gabe gutierrez, thanks for that report. retailers are rolling out deep discounts to entice shoppers as they return unwanted gifts and start redeeming gift cards today. eight in ten shoppers were expected to buy $30 billion worth of gift cards this holiday shopping season. cnbc s julia boorstin is at the grove mall in los angeles. reporter: nearly 80% of consumers said they plan to shop post-holiday sales according to retail me not and a lot of those sales started christmas day with target, nordstrom s and kohl s all slashing prices on the 25th
has grown. it s just that the numbers are getting bigger so they matter more. more people are getting affected. i think that s really what s happening this year. what are these companies trying to do to make amends? is an apology enough at this stage? well, you know, apologies are not going to, you know, fall very well at this stage but amazon, for instance, is offering $20 gift cards to a lot of customers. most retailers are offering to refund the shipping charges. but when you look, when we have talked to customers, they are still upset. that doesn t make up for the fact that they didn t have that present to give their son or daughter or husband, and you know, a lot of customers say well, they said it was guaranteed, we thought it was guaranteed. if we knew there could be an issue, we would have just gone to the store and picked up the item. so it does raise questions whether this will do damage to people s willingness to order online next year. what about good will, the brand,
ups and fed-ex is playing catch- up. what are they trying to do? ups is going to offer $20 gift cards and refunds to customers who failed to arrive. the refunds will cover shipping charges. ups shutdown a statement on christmas saying it experienced heavy holiday volume and the volume of air packages exceeded the delivery system. fed-ex said they were sorry for the it lays. ups shipped more than 132 million packages during its peak the seven days before christmas. ups shattered their records on monday. the company in kentucky expect today process 8 million packages