I read this article that suggests millions of presents will be lost by delivery companies in the run up to Christmas. The article suggests that if the failure rate remains same as last year around 5.6 million parcels will either be returned to the sender or disposed of by the carrier. One of the main problems is carriers delivering to the wrong address either because the details are entered incorrectly or the information is out of date. Last posting dates this year are December 17 for 2-class items, December 20 for 1st-class and December 22 for special delivery.