Shout out to businesses that email tracking information and link to their own systems instead of the package delivery service’s tracking system. These third party tracking site plug-ins often lag behind the information provided to them by the delivery service’s site.
Special shout out to those who hide tracking information behind a required account login when they could simply provide the tracking number in the email.
Most special shout out to sites that do not allow you to know anything about a particular order unless you click through to their site and log in. It makes tracking past orders a nightmare.
Hat-tip to the motherfuckers who mark something as shipped as soon as they generate a tracking number, even though it may not be in the carrier’s hands for days.
My side business is a transportation management system (TMS) that communicates with shipping carriers. Because I got so frustrated with this exact problem I developed a series of “hacks” so that when this happens customers don’t actually see it marked shipped until someone confirms it.
It’s very annoying but I think it’s worth it to convey accurate information. A lot of misunderstandings and pissed off customers come from shitty tracking APIs. My other favorite is “out for delivery” when it’s not; they don’t want to get in trouble for delivering it late but by lying to people you’ve just pissed them off even more.
I’ve had more than a few Out for Delivery shipments that take two days or Undeliverable, No One Home when I’ve been home with dogs who tell me when a bird farts so yeah. Those deliver folks are overworked and underpaid but heck it is frustrating.
I had a package from Loop Ear Protection that did this and didn’t ship for a month. They also don’t have customer service and only an AI chat bot that condescendingly kept telling me that the package was shipped. Isn’t life grand?
I’ve avoided ordering from Loop after reading similar reports. I’d considered getting some of their ear plugs to try, but now I would just try something generic from AliExpress. If it’s not going to show up for a month, it may as well be super cheap.
Probably the same thing with branding on it anyways.
I got into an argument with my local post office for doing that. The mailman was notorious for marking packages as delivered when he hadn’t even left the damn parking lot. Every morning at 8 AM I would get a delivered notification to my email.
The USPS employee I was talking to said “oh that’s normal, we all do that.” Huh? You mark a package as delivered and you haven’t even left the parking lot?! How does that make any sense? Why even provide a status update to me at all if you do that??
deleted by creator
Email tracking in general is cursed. I keep getting letters from a few companies because “you’re not receiving our emails.” No, I’m just blocking your 14 hidden pixels and not clicking your fucking
awstrack.melinks.Shout out to Postmark for allowing me (as a web developer) to avoid spying on my users by letting me disable rewriting everything as a tracking link.
Wait they send you a physical letter?
A creditor and some other random company have done that.
Could you tell me more about those hidden pixels? How do I block them?
I use Apple’s Mail on iOS and macOS that block external assets by default. But I also block all that trash via DNS too. I use Blocky loaded with tons of blocklists.
Fucking hell, yes! These infuriate me. And not mildly, either! I sometimes wish I had a bot net that could ping their stupid systems so much that they’d suffer for routing tracking through their own internal system/service.
Absolutely hate having to log in to a website just to view tracking. Half the time I’m on my phone checking the tracking email and can’t be bothered to log in, just so I can copy and paste the tracking number into USPS or whoever.
USPS at least has informed delivery tho.
Out them, shame them. (Of course they probably don’t have any shame, but still…) Who are you referring to?
Most online stores do not directly link to USPS/UPS/Fed Ex/DHL tracking etc anymore. The list would be too long. You have to log in to get the tracking information and then go to the delivery services site to query the tracking number.
I had this happen once and I had a hell of a time trying to find a way around their bullshit. I finally just emailed them and asked for a real tracking number not a link and they actually obliged.
Don’t use them. There is really nothing else we can do it.
Shop at brick and mortar with cash as much as you can
Nothing else we can do about it except complain here on Mildly Infuriating as god or whatever intended.
You can stop using it
If it were as easy as you prescribe.
I know it is a crazy concept but people can forgo consumption… If the merchant doesn’t teat you right, don’t use the merchant.
Try that with medicine. In rural areas. Etc.
Most commerce is not medicine but sure that’s a good example of it being a necessity.
Even that is a challenge, with facial-recognition camera systems and wifi position tracking in stores. Time to just stop buying stuff except for what is necessary.
Amen!
Bluetooth and WiFi should be disabled in any shopping area though. I know most people don’t do it.
