I realize that USPS and Amazon are different companies, but they use electronic systems to report shipping information. Why can’t those electronic systems synchronize and report the same information?
So early in the morning on Thursday, Amazon claims the package has physically left the building. Today is Friday (after USPS should have done their evening update on Thursday) and they claim they still don’t have it.
Why are they different?
What type of “tracking” did you pay for? With Delivery Confirmation, the USPS is only obligated to scan the package at time of delivery. Delivery Confirmation is not tracking and often has only sporatic scanning in transit.
Electronic DC is the least likely to get interim scans. Postal workers tend to notice and scan the green sticker purchased at the counter, but often overlook that one extra bar code on a shipping label.
Was this a book? Media Mail is one of the lowest priority mailing options, and is not sorted or processed until all First Class, Priority, and Express items are processed. That may mean a wait of two or three days with the items sitting in a bin at the sorting facility. Bell California is a black hole for Media Mail items. I think they wait to process them until they have a full truck-load.
Added: Why should the USPS take Amazon’s or anyone else’s word for it that an item has shipped?
I guess what I’m asking is why I should have confidence in either one of them when they contradict each other.
If you tell me on the phone, “I handed the package to Jane,” and then I call Jane and she says, “He told me to get the package, but I haven’t gotten it yet,” I’m going to wonder what’s up. Especially if you told me you gave it to her yesterday morning at 2:30am and today at 7am she says she doesn’t have it.
It just seems possible to have their systems communicate with each other so that they give the same info. What would seem easier would be for Amazon to just re-post USPS’s info.
I once ordered a cat. Had the damndest time determining its status. Was it in transit? Was it delivered? The only way I could make sense of it all was to keep opening my front door and looking.
I suggest a lot of it boils down to “our records show” – they may not jibe because Amazon knows it left the building and is out of their hands – but the USPS (or FedEx, etc.) hasn’t scanned it yet. UPS has the “reported to us by the shipper” notification. I also wonder if there is a computational resource needed to update/synch information – for the vendor to poll the shipper on a bajillion packages may take up processing and bandwidth time. Is it possible that the shippers tell the vendors not to hit their servers so often as a condition of access to the data?
When I ordered some software recently and had it shipped USPS, I got the same message you did when I tried to track the package. I got that same message up to the moment it showed up on my doorstep. I don’t think the postal service puts a lot of effort into tracking Priority Mail packages.
Quoted to show why I love the 'Dope – you guys have the nerdiest sense of humor, ever. 
The answer to your question is that they are using two separate and very large constantly updating databases on seperate systems and networks.
Without getting to technical, the systems probably can’t update each other in real time without getting bogged down from all the back and forth traffic. And it simply takes time to update thousands of records in a database.
Because Amazon and the USPS would rather you post on here and whine about their inconsistent data than their high prices.
I, for one, am anxiously awaiting the day when pizza delivery has order tracking.
“Oooo! It’s going in the oven!”
“It’s in the car! It’s in the car!”
“He made a stop on Mulberry Street! That’s right around the corner!”
“Oh, no! He’s lost!”
“315 … 317 … 319 … 321!!! Hurry, hurry, race him to the door!!”
Suppose the status on the USPS website changed to “delivered” but the item never showed up at your door. You’d probably call Amazon to complain, and if they said, “Oh, but the status says delivered, so it’s not our fault that YOU lost it,” you’d probably be a bit ticked off. So from that point of view, you can probably understand why the USPS doesn’t want to take Amazon’s word for it that the item is in their possession until they’ve had a chance to scan it and process it into their own tracking system.
Quoth Rhythmdvl:
I tried that once, too, but I gave up when I realized that cats never obey orders.
Even worse for me, sometimes things will still show undelivered for days after delivery. The USPS just doesn’t do tracking.
FedEx tracking is almost that good and almost that granular. By comparison, USPS tracking is closer to the level of “Uhhh… Amazon drove a truck full of boxes to the post office. We probably ought to unload them today.”
I use ups and If a driver that I don’t know does my pickup, he doesn’t scan the packages at the time he picks them up. Apparently neither do the jokers that work in the local hub. I have had many packages, after tracking them, show only a arrival scan at the depot from where they are dispatched. The drivers I know, I make them scan the packages at the time they pick them up. otherwise, if they are lost, they just say they never got the package. The info I use to print the packing label, and the one that assigns the tracking number, don’t mean crap. Only after it’s scanned will ups take responsibility for it.
The Dominos Pizza website does this, at least for the Dominos near my house. Can’t vouch for all Dominos Pizza shops. ETA: well, I mean, they update you on where in the cooking process it is, and then when it went out, not the GPS in the driver’s car. Though that would be cool.
But I didn’t tell you on the phone I handed the package to Jane. I told you I put my package in Jane’s box (hehe), which is conveniently located outside of my office with her logo emblazoned all over it. When you called Jane, she told you, that I let her know I put my package in her box (hehe).
The depressing part is that I had to tell her I had put my package in her box.
Amazon is telling you what they can reliably tell you, that a package has left a building. At their facility, they could load it on a carriers truck that is parked at one of their loading docks, they could shut and seal the door and they would accurately report the package has left the building.
The carrier may not pick up that truck until the next day, then the package needs to get processed and the carrier may not be consistent with tracking packages.
Lots of reasons why they may not present the same information, but it’s possible neither one is incorrect either.
If a carrier was poor at providing accurate tracking info, and the importance to the customers for accurate tracking data exceeded the cost savings in freight by using that carrier (and thus profit for Amazon and other e-tailers because freight is typically a profit center), then the carrier would be dropped or forced to provide info that is accurate and more in sync with someone like Amazon. As it is, it’s probably not a big enough deal to outweigh cost savings.
A lot of that makes sense.
But it would also make sense (to me) for Amazon to just re-post USPS’s data when I do my lookup. That way I see the most accurate information.
I don’t care if the package has been put in Jane’s box, I want to know that Jane is driving her box with the package in it.
In fact, it’s actively misleading to tell someone that Elvis has left the building, when he’s only sitting in the car outside in the parking lot. The announcement isn’t for the benefit of the people still in the building that Elvis just left, it’s for the people expecting Elvis to arrive at the destination. So, I don’t care if he left the building, I want to know when he actually got on the road and is driving here.
So, sure, I can just check USPS’s Web site, knowing that they provide the information I really want (Elvis is moving down the road). But I just don’t get why Amazon’s information feels so different - re-posting seems better for the customer.
I work with and manage databases for mega-corps transmitting data back and forth and I am not sure if you know how expensive this stuff can be. You can only guess at these estimates until you see what is going on behind the scenes but a marginal improvement of what you want might cost $50 million spanning both sides with costs going well past the $500 million dollar mark to outfit both Amazon and the USPS for this kind of up to the minute tracking. It could be much more or maybe a little less but this type of infrastructure is not cheap and few people care about it as much as you do.
Postal worker checking in.
There is a thing called IPS (International Postal System). It’s quite new, and we’re still being trained on it. Australia Post uses it, and so do quite a few other postal administrations (not sure about USPS offhand) with more coming online all the time.
Basically, it is just what it sounds like. It’s a standardised system for data collection and storage for international mail, designed to be uniform across the signatory nations, and to make life easier. At this stage, it’s at the “bag” level, so mailbags or trays being sent by international airline are covered, but individual mail articles are not. It’s probably a matter of time before individual letters are covered, but I have no official knowledge of that being planned at this stage.
Companies which lodge large amounts of mail domestically in such places as Australia or the United States (say, power utilities, banks, Amazon, etc) already are using standardised addressing software, and have done for a few years. It’s not a great leap for this to be combined with the IPS I mentioned above. Again, I have no concrete information to this extent, but it’s gotta be on the cards…