Black Friday on pay day, 5 days before Pakjesavond: records expected
The timing of Black Friday this year has package deliverers shaking in their boots. The discount festival falls right around payday for many people and only five days before Sinterklaas brings his gifts to Dutch children on Pakjesavond. Online payment system iDEAL expects a record number of payments. And delivery companies are really worried about delivering packages on time.
Last year, iDeal processed over 7.1 million online payments on Black Friday and 5.1 million on Cyber Monday - two records the payment processor expects to break today and on Monday.
Director Marleen ten Ham of Thuiswinkel.org, the trade association for webshops, told ANP that November is traditionally the busiest month of the year for web shops. Many consumers postpone purchases to see if they can get a good deal on Black Friday.
According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Netherlands residents are growing increasingly comfortable with online shopping. In the first half of the year, 81 percent of Dutch people aged 12 and older bought at least one thing online - the highest percentage in the past decade. Online shopping increased significantly during the coronavirus pandemic and its lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. After a slight decrease in 2022, it has been rising again in 2023 and 2024, CBS said.
Even the run-up to Black Friday was busy for package deliverers this year. On Monday, PostNL reported processing a record 2.8 million packages in one day.
“It is very busy around this time every year. But this year it will be very busy for the parcel delivery companies,” Jeroen Gehlen, co-founder of parcel delivery platform Wuunder, told NU.nl. “We already saw a big peak on Monday, but Tuesday and Wednesday were also extremely busy for most Dutch parcel delivery companies.”
“There are only five days between Black Friday and Sinterklaas this year. Last year, there were 12,” Stephan van den Eijnden, managing director of e-commerce at PostNL, told the newspaper.
Most parcel delivery companies expect to be able to handle this busy period, Gehlen said. “There is no snow or ice at the moment to cause delays. And delivery companies know that it will be busy. So they have prepared for this, for example, by hiring extra staff. And round Black Friday and Sinterklaas it is not very difficult to find extra staff.”
He is more worried about Christmas, which falls on a Wednesday this year with Boxing Day following on Thursday. “If you take the Friday after Christmas off, you have five days off in a row. Everyone wants that. Then it is also more difficult to find temporary workers,” Gehlen said. “We will see huge delays around Christmas. The chances are slim that parcels that you ordered just before Christmas will arrive before the holidays. They may even be delivered in early January.”
