Is this UPS activity unusual?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have a package I ordered.

I received an email from the company on November 6:

Your order ---- has been shipped via ups and your tracking number is ----

But when I go to check the tracking on the UPS website, it says the label has been created but:

UPS doesn’t have possession of the package yet.

So is my package sitting on a shelf at the company’s warehouse? Is UPS supposed to be coming to the warehouse to pick it up? If so, why haven’t they done so in thirteen days? Is the company supposed to be bringing my package to a UPS facility? If so, why haven’t they done so in thirteen days?

I feel that my package should have been moving a lot more by this point. But I’m not sure who is responsible for this lack of movement.

2

Your package may have originated in another country. Can you determine this, or perhaps contact the seller?

3

I think the problem is with the shipper, because in my experience, the UPS driver scans packages as soon as they’re picked up (or at least once they get back to the depot. Since UPS still doesn’t have it, I think you need to contact the company.

4

This here. When I see this message for several days, it usually means the package is coming from China and UPS doesn’t have it yet, though they’re expecting it.

5

In case I’m not the only one confused by that sentence - what you mean is that you ordered a package, but have not yet received it, correct?

(When you say, “I have a package I ordered,” it sounds like you already received it.)

6

This is the status when the shipper prints the label but UPS hasn’t picked it up/received it yet. It’s not uncommon for a business to print the UPS label as soon as they get the order, but it may not be handed off to UPS until later (hours/days/weeks).

7

^
This. I believe Amazon (for example) has their own delivery network, so it might leave the Amazon warehouse on an Amazon truck, en-route to a UPS depot with the pre-printed UPS label. UPS will make the final delivery. They print the label with the UPS tracking number on it (UPS assigns the tracking number when this happens), but UPS doesn’t have the package. It wouldn’t surprise me if other major retailers don’t do the same.

Give it a few days, and you’ll have your package. Lower cost and, probably sooner, than it would have been had the shipper given it to UPS at the origin location.

8

Sorry for any confusion. I guess I meant I have a situation in which I have ordered a package. To be clear, I have not received it.

9

Yeah I know - it was probably stupidly nitpicky of me to even mention it, since it was subsequently clear what you meant.

But this is the Dope, so SOMEONE was probably going to say something. I guess I decided to be the a-hole who brought it up this time.

10

That is a very likely possibility. The package is a board game and they are often manufactured in China even if the design company is located elsewhere.

When this is the case, the company will sometimes notify buyers that a package has been placed on a ship and is slowly enjoying an ocean cruise. My experience has been that when a UPS label has been printed, it’s usually a sign the game has arrived in America.

11

I doubt it’s the case here, but there’s also something, along those lines, called Zone Skipping. A shipper waits until they have enough shipments going to one region of the country, ships them (as a single shipment) via a 3rd party and the 3rd party hands them off to UPS. The idea being that it’s cheaper to send one truck a thousand miles miles and have UPS do the last mile than to have UPS transport each package the entire distance. In fact, this isn’t unlike the status you’d see for a domestic shipper when you order something international (as has been mentioned upthread) and it’s still en route to the US.

There can also be other reasons for printing a label well before handing off the package. Some businesses print the label as soon as the order comes in, regardless of when it’ll actually be handed off to UPS. A lot of places do this because the label moves through their system with the order as it’s being picked. It’s just how they pick orders. OTOH, some places do this so they can mark it shipped and buy themselves a few extra days before you contact them asking about it.

Regardless, all the status the OP is seeing means is that the label has been printed, but the UPS doesn’t have the package yet.
Also, in case it’s part of the confusion, keep in mind that businesses (like mine) have UPS software and generate labels, with tracking numbers, on site. Even if the hand the package to UPS a few hours later, it’ll have that status in the mean time.

12

Tomorrow will be two weeks, though. If it were me, I’d be asking the company what the status of the order is.

13

Some of the above suggested causes may be true if the condition persists for longer than about 24 hours. But in general, this condition is very common for any shipper (not just UPS) for up to 24 hours or so. When a supplier says “shipped”, they just mean your credit card has been charged, it’s been boxed, and a shipping label has been slapped on the box and they’re done with it; it’s now waiting for carrier pickup.

14

I don’t trust UPS. They have terrible local delivery in my province, and the last time they scammed me out of customs dues and never delivered.

It’s got to the point that if I’m buying something online and the seller says they ship ups, I don’t make the purchase.

15

UPS is very strange. We literally just had an experience that is noteworthy in its weirdness.

We placed an order in mid October. It was sent with shipping service noted as UPS. The package was supposed to arrive on 24 October. It was marked as delivered, but was nowhere to be found. We dutifully reported this, and waited for resolution.

UPS called us, and challenged us on the non-delivery, asking us to look around the outside of the house again. We did so, and confirmed there was no box. Two days later, they called again with the same challenge. A week later, a UPS representative came to the house and basically told us they didn’t believe the package wasn’t delivered, and they wanted to walk around outside and look everywhere with us accompanying them, all the while asking us repeatedly if we were sure we hadn’t received it but simply forgot. Then they went up and down the street, checking with neighbors three or four doors away on both sides.

Two days ago, the box mysteriously appeared on our doorstep, with the original shipping tag dated in October. We called them, and they said they’d searched their local dispatch warehouse and found the package after all. No explanation for how it was marked “delivered.”

And even aside from that, none of this makes sense from a business perspective. Our order was a fifty-euro pair of children’s boots. They had to have spent a multiple of that figure in human time, trying to locate the lost box. Purely from a standpoint of cost-effectiveness, the Amazon model where they just write it off is a lot more sensible.

The only explanation that seems plausible to me is that they’ve been having an internal shrinkage problem, where random boxes are mysteriously being redirected by one or more nefarious staffers and then resold for private profit, and what we were seeing was just the visible part of their larger internal investigation. If I’m right, then they didn’t find the box lost in a dusty corner of the delivery center, they found the box in a pile of other boxes that had been collected by a thief, and we were lucky it was still there.

In any case — yeah, UPS is pretty strange.

16

I have seen this hundreds of times. I get a notice from eBay or wherever that the package has “shipped” and the shipper only has a tracking number, if that. Days, sometimes over a week later the package finally ships.

I have no idea why UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc. let these sellers do this. To me, the item isn’t shipped until it’s in the shipper’s hands.

17

Agree it’s be nice to have a status like “pre-shipped” which means the carrier knows the shipment will should be tendered to them eventually. But right now all they know is the vendor intends to eventually hand them a box addressed to you.

18

Does UPS not take a photo of the package at the point of delivery? I thought all the major carriers did that now, since a photo with GPS coordinates makes an easy record of the delivery.

19

I worked in shipping for many years. My company used to ship out about 200 UPS packages a day. Many of these answers could be the case for you. I have very little experience with international shipping, though.

But my experience has been when their computer shows the seller has shipped the item but they have no further information means that UPS has lost it in their system. UPS drivers don’t scan the packages when they pick them up, though FedEx drivers do.

A package could have been tossed on a wrong truck, or it fell off a skid and is stuck behind a table in one of their warehouses. We had an incident one time where an entire bag of small packages was put on a wrong truck without UPS scanning the packages. It turned up a week later about 800 miles away. None of the packages were supposed to go anywhere near where it got found.

So my guess – UPS has the package, but doesn’t know where it is. Let the seller know what’s going on. If they’re worth anything, they’ll get on this quickly.

20

Haven’t experienced non-delivery, but I feel exactly the same about UPS. When shipping from the US to Canada, UPS is uniquely notorious for slapping on customs “service charges” that can easily exceed the value of the item, exactly the kind of item that will often breeze through customs via the post office with no added cost at all because it’s below the threshold value for duty.