Jan 16 2009
Dear United States Postal Service
I purchased an item from California earlier this week and paid a handsome sum of money for USPS “International Priority” shipping. The stated service window to myself in Ontario Canada for this level of service is “6 to 10 days”, which really doesn’t seem like it’s much of a “priority in your eyes despite the signifigant portion of money I paid to ship what was effectively a 1.5 pound box. but that’s another story.
When the alternative was 10 to 15 days for regular 1st class parcel service for only a few dollars less, it seemed to make sense at the time.
One of the supposed big advantages of the International Priority shipping was that it had a tracking number. I presumed that this tracking number would actually mean I could track the progress of my parcel, but to date (5 days after shipment) it has shown me absolutely nothing except for the fact that the USPS actually “accepted” the box.
I has not shown a single shard of tracking information since. I’m going to guess (hope?) that it’s passed through at least a few USPS depot and was perhaps loaded on a truck for the cross-country trip, but at no point during this process does the parcel get scanned? I’m going to guess that yes, it’s been scanned…so I must ask…why can’t this information be relayed to the customer that paid for “Tracking” to begin with so we actually have a clue that our parcel is still en route, and not lost behind some conveyor belt at a dusty parcel depot in Chicken Scratch Montana?
I bought something from Cali once and it went to Ontario, CAlifornia. Very common problem of they do too much abbreviating in the address.
The seller was very thorough and did send me a PDF of the customs documents and such, so I’m confident that it *is* enroute to me..but the tracking feature as been a dismal failure so far.
I tracked it today and the number is now magically showing as “invalid” at USPS.com. WTF?
Thankfully it now appears on the Canada Post website and it appears it might have cleared customs.
I had the same problem. Then discovered that USPS uses Fedex as their third party provider. I’d suggest you track status of your package on the Fedex website using the tracking number USPS gave you.