My New Pet Peeve: Shipment "Tracking"

I know this hits me at home today, simply because I'm expectantly waiting for the delivery of a package. Yes, like a kid about to get a new toy, I just can't wait. But, it still applies.

I was given the tracking number from the person who shipped it. That's great, and I think tracking numbers are great for showing that something was delivered, and when it was delivered(*). However, FedEx, and I'm sure the other shipping companies, seem to want to "wow" us by providing Shipment Travel History, which, as near as I can tell, is fairly well useless.

First off, the estimated delivery date is August 3 by 7:00 pm. Great. But the "Shipment Travel History" tells me it was put on the truck at 8:10 am. In other words, they are unable to narrow down delivery time to less than 11 hours.

Here's the thing, I understand they might not be able to narrow it down any better, and I would be ok with that. If they said to me, your package will be delivered today by 7:00pm, I'm happy and fine. I would not expect anything until 7:00pm. But knowing it was placed on a truck at 8 this morning, keeps making me think, maybe it's here now, maybe now, what about now, why isn't it here now?!?

Yes, it's basically information overload. I don't need to know the item is on the truck driving around the valley and some time it will get to me. I only want to know when I get it.

Another thing for me is that the Shipment Travel History shows all of the FedEx facilities the package was routed through prior to being put on the truck to deliver it to me. I really can't see how that's helpful to me whatsoever. Yes, it's good to know the item was picked up from the shipper and when. It's also good to know when the item was delivered to the buyer and when. But knowing what sorting facility it has been through during the interim seems useless. Sure, maybe it's useful for FedEx, but it's not useful to me. Essentially, the only thing that seems to matter is "picked up" and "delivered", and yet they want to provide all this other information as though it has some use, and it doesn't.

I'm done ranting.

(*) Incidentally, I discovered the hard way that delivery information on tracking can be useless. I was expecting a package, and it hadn't arrived by late afternoon, so I checked the online tracking. It showed that the item has been delivered and signed for. However, since I was there the whole day, it obviously wasn't delivered to me. I called up the shipping company, and they explained that the item has been delivered and signed for, and they had proof of all of that, so I had no recourse through them. They even provided me with an image of the signature. When I explained that it wasn't my signature, and I had no idea who it belonged to, they didn't care. It was signed for. I even explained that the signature clearly didn't even match my name, so it clearly wasn't signed for by me. Again, not their problem. Delivered and signed for. So, I contacted the selling agent to explain what had happened. Their response, not their problem either. They can prove that the item was picked up, and the shipping agent can prove that it was delivered and signed for. Thus, nobody was at fault, even though it was clearly not delivered to me. It seems as though as long as they get a signature from somebody, and heck that can be a hobo on the street, it's considered delivered and nobody is to blame from that point onward.

Fortunately for me, I knew a higher-up management type in said shipping company. I'm not the kind of person that throws names around, or threatens underlings with, "I know so-and-so", and I don't like to go those people I know and try to circumvent others and get preferential treatment. But with my issues in this case, I called up my friend. Explained what had happened, and he said he would look into it. The next day, I got a call from the driver. He specifically remembered delivering the package, he remembered exactly who he delivered to, and what time, and he specifically remembered the girl who signed for the package. (As a side note, I was impressed by his memory. I mean, for someone who delivers probably hundreds of packages a day to remember any specific package is pretty amazing.) His memory was so good, in fact, that it was clear that he had delivered the package to the wrong address. It was an easy thing of the fact that he delivered to an address NORTH of a particular street, while I am SOUTH of that same street. When I said that, he realized what he had done. And, being a nice guy, or at least I like to think so, he went to the wrong address, recovered the package (which hadn't been open because the people who received it had no idea who it belonged to), and brought it to me. He was very apologetic, and, as I said, I think he was a nice guy. All in all, an honest mistake on his part, to me, isn't the problem. The problem was the other people refusing to even acknowledge that something could have happened.

That explanation took longer than my original rant. Ok, other people, talking about your shipping nightmares.

Quote: konceptum

However, FedEx, and I'm sure the other shipping companies, seem to want to "wow" us by providing Shipment Travel History, which, as near as I can tell, is fairly well useless.

Well, yes and no. You can find out, for example, whether it's made it to your city yet or not. Whether that's valuable information or useless trivia, depends on many things. For example, you might be surprised how soothing it is for some higher-ups at work.

I don't know if courier companies do this in the US, but in mexico you can have a package delivered to a shipping company office and pick it up there. In such cases it's useful to know the package is there. Sometimes it's even faster than having it delivered at home or the office.

Quote: konceptum

First off, the estimated delivery date is August 3 by 7:00 pm. Great. But the "Shipment Travel History" tells me it was put on the truck at 8:10 am. In other words, they are unable to narrow down delivery time to less than 11 hours.

Thats good news, its on the delivery truck and will make
it to your house today. The delivery driver has different
places he goes to everyday, how on earth does he know
the exact time he'll be making yours. He has no idea
whats in front of him when he leaves on his route. Its
not like delivering mail.

For me, I now call the Co. that has the item I want and check who they ship with.
IF it's FedEx then they don't get my order.............. Someone else does.
I'm sorry for the good people who work for FedEx but the local people are worthless.
And if I have to pay for my item then you can ship it my way or I will get it somewhere else.

In most cases you can chargeback the company you purchased the item from. Even if they have proof they sent it, since the transaction was with (Visa) rather than an individual, said company usually doesn't have the legal department to win the case. This should only be used as a last resort because it's often used illegally, look up "friendly fraud".

Quote: konceptum

I know this hits me at home today, simply because I'm expectantly waiting for the delivery of a package. Yes, like a kid about to get a new toy, I just can't wait. But, it still applies.

I was given the tracking number from the person who shipped it. That's great, and I think tracking numbers are great for showing that something was delivered, and when it was delivered(*). However, FedEx, and I'm sure the other shipping companies, seem to want to "wow" us by providing Shipment Travel History, which, as near as I can tell, is fairly well useless.

First off, the estimated delivery date is August 3 by 7:00 pm. Great. But the "Shipment Travel History" tells me it was put on the truck at 8:10 am. In other words, they are unable to narrow down delivery time to less than 11 hours.

Here's the thing, I understand they might not be able to narrow it down any better, and I would be ok with that. If they said to me, your package will be delivered today by 7:00pm, I'm happy and fine. I would not expect anything until 7:00pm. But knowing it was placed on a truck at 8 this morning, keeps making me think, maybe it's here now, maybe now, what about now, why isn't it here now?!?

Yes, it's basically information overload. I don't need to know the item is on the truck driving around the valley and some time it will get to me. I only want to know when I get it.

I like and use it. Two times I shipped FedEx and had to file a claim. Once it went to sorting and dissapeared for a few days. I was selling a small engine on eBay. Buyew was wondering where it was and we both kept looking for it, better to know it is in "x" city than to just hear "it will be there tuesday." Well, after three days I filed a claim. Told the buyer when I got paid he gets paid. Strangely the claim check arrived to me the same day the engine got to him. Without the tracking it would have been way harder.

A second eBay claim was a dipstick to an antique V-8. This time FedEx accidently lost it or/and destroyed it. Was able to tell them it was on a truck that day, WTF happened then?

A friend in the forwarding business always needs to tell people where stuff is.

When I sold on Ebay I used FedEx hundreds
of times. Way better than UPS.

You don't even have to WAIT for them to deliver it, you can go pick it up yourself at the distribution center. If you're in a small town (or big town for that matter), you can always intercept the package before it leaves on the truck in the morning. The driver will always give it to you, just show an ID the first time, and if you get regular packages (from eBay for example) they'll start culling them out for you ahead of time. Driver would rather you came and got it instead of him wasting time delivering it later; saves him time. I do it all the time.

This is a bit off topic, but let me rant about the UPS Stores.

Recently I needed to send something to Cyprus (the country, not the city in California), but time was not much of an issue. They said they could get it there in about seven days for around $15, which I agreed to, and they provided a tracking number.

About three weeks later the recipient said they never received it. So I put the number in the UPS web site's tracking feature and it said it was an invalid number. So I went to the UPS store and they said they sent it via the US post office, and I should ask them. So I went over to the nearest post office and showed the tracking number and they said it wasn't in their format so said they couldn't help. So, I went back to UPS Store and probed deeper. It turns out they just put an 80-cent international stamp on the envelope and threw it in the mailbox. Their tracking number was of no help at all, as the letter wasn't tracked past them dropping it in a mailbox. For this I was charged about $15. What a rip off!

UPS should be ashamed to let these UPS stores use their name, when they specifically told me "We're not UPS."

The other complete suck about UPS stores, well at least the one I am referring to, is they have no relationship with fedex outbound.

I was coming close to a fedex pickup deadline, needed an express envelope because the drop box at the Summerlin PO didn't have any, so I went to the closest place which was a UPS store at the circle. I asked if they had any Fedex envelopes and she looked at me like I was from Mars. AS IF I'm going to get a PMB someplace I can't drop fedex off for pickup.

Quote: QuadDeuces

so I went to the closest place which was a UPS store at the circle.

Are you referring to the one at the Trails shopping center? They are very rude in that store.

Quote: QuadDeuces

The other complete suck about UPS stores, well at least the one I am referring to, is they have no relationship with fedex outbound.

I was coming close to a fedex pickup deadline, needed an express envelope because the drop box at the Summerlin PO didn't have any, so I went to the closest place which was a UPS store at the circle. I asked if they had any Fedex envelopes and she looked at me like I was from Mars. AS IF I'm going to get a PMB someplace I can't drop fedex off for pickup.

Frankly, if I were working at a UPS store, and someone asked for some FedEx product, I'd look at them weird too.

Have you ever ordered a Whopper at McDonalds?

Quote: Wizard

UPS should be ashamed to let these UPS stores use their name,

UPS sucks, I won't use them anymore. And you have
to be careful about sending stuff to a lot of foreign
countries. Mail and pakages are stolen all the time
by postal employees if they come from the US. I
eventually stopped selling outside the US on Ebay
because they ripped everything off in some places.

Always use the PO when possible, and buy insurance.

The worst ever had to be DHL. When I was at in auto-loans we seitched from FedEx to DHL for cost reasons. At first my biggest complaint was I had to revise the cheat-chart I kept at my desk for overseas shipping times. But I saw why they later went out of busiess. Terrible. Normally a person who works in custoer service could care less what common carrier you use. But people were jumping for joy when they went back to FedEx 2 about 2 months later.

I even told my boss, "how can management have the goal of being a world class operation when we use such a bad carrier just ?"

Quote: AZDuffman

I like and use it.

Ditto. When you work at a large corporation, it is
very NICE to know when something arrived and
who signed for it.

This goes for both sending and receiving.
Sometimes a pkg can get lost INSIDE our
own receiving dept.

Here's the followup. Unfortunately, I had emergency junk happen at the store, so I had to leave home in order to take care of things. Foolishly, I thought I'd be gone for a short period of time, but instead lasted most of the afternoon and evening. Anyway, while at the store, I checked the "tracking", with, again, most of the information being useless. But, it did have the entry "Delivered to address other than recipient." Which disturbed me. Anyway, I get home, to find that they had delivered the package to my neighbor. Now, this house has been vacant for 6 months. But, apparently, these people had moved in that afternoon, after I had left my house. I got my package with no problems, and the new neighbors seem very nice. However, it does bother me a bit that my package was left with complete strangers that I didn't even know and had never even met. Ah well, the rigors of package shipment.

On a note about the UPS stores, I have a story there. I had a UPS store package and ship an item for me that I sold on eBay. Unfortunately, the item was received damaged. I filed a claim, and UPS went out to see the package and confirmed that it had been packaged incorrectly and thus damaged, and that I would receive my insurance claim on the item. A few weeks go by, and no check. I call UPS, and they inform me that the UPS Store which did the packaging is responsible for paying me my insurance claim. I called the UPS Store, got the run around quite a bit, but was eventually able to get them to send me my money. Ironically, the check was not written on a UPS check of any kind, but on what looked like a business/personal check. I learned that the UPS Stores are independently owned, and are responsible for their own insurance claims for things that they package. However, just like some people on eBay, just because the store charges YOU insurance, doesn't mean that they are paying any insurance to anybody else, up to and including UPS. Instead, some UPS Stores are "self insuring". Now, it's a question that I ask prior to having them package something for me. If they self-insure, then I hesitate to use that particular UPS Store. I talked with the owner of a Fed Ex store, and he said the process is somewhat similar, except that Fed Ex does require that all insurance go through them. He said he wouldn't be surprised, however, if some Fed Ex store owners charge the insurance, but not put it on the actual waybill, figuring that they will package the item carefully enough that an insurance claim won't be an issue anyway.

Back in the late 90s, I used to ship PCs out to the field. The boxes were clearly labeled as desktops, which I thought was kind of dumb, but that's the way it was. Anyway, one of them never made it to the destination. FedEx had it all the way to getting on the truck for delivery, except delivery never got made.
The final answer I received from FedEx was they believed the PC either fell off the truck, or someone took it while the driver was making another delivery.

Personally, I like all the information. I can see my package working it's way towards me. And I know the deliveries to my house are generally around the same time, so seeing it is out for delivery at 7 AM doesn't bother me.

I know EXACTLY what you're talking about in the first part of your post konceptum. I live in small town Iowa. Once I was waiting for a package and reading where it was. It was received early morning in the local processing center, a twenty minute drive. I didn't get it until the NEXT afternoon. I was thinking "This is so stupid, I could go drive there myself and pick the damn thing up, and have it TODAY instead of TOMORROW, ugh"