Package Tracking

Charles Kinbote

So I ordered a package a few days ago from Urban Outfitters, and tracked it until, on October 29th, it was listed as arriving at a local USPS station at 3:00. Since then, it hasn't budged, according to the tracker, and I sure as hell have seen neither hide nor hair of it. I was planning on popping by one of the three POs in town tomorrow and seeing if I can't nab it, but my main question is: Do such company-run trackers track it down to its delivery at a house? I ask because there are a lot of addresses very, very similar to mine, and a 3-day gap between arrival and delivery seems a little wonky to me. What are the odds that it got delivered to some other person, and if it did, what can I do about this?

Aurin

Call the number on the tracking site and ask them what's up. Most of the time they'll be able to figure it out, and yes, they should track it all the way to your house. The tracker on Urban Outfitters (if that's where you're at, and not just redirected to USPS.com) it's just pulling the information from USPS's site.

Szechuanosaurus

Yeah, the whole point of tracking a parcel is to get a confirmed delivery, which would also require some to sign for the parcel. If this isn't showing up on the on-line tracker, then the most likely problem is that it's being held at the depot for some reason (note, this reason may be that USPS has lost it). Basically, these systems are fairly automated these days. The parcel will have a barcode on it that gets scanned every time the parcel is loaded onto a van, delivered at a central sorting or dispatch depot or delivered to the recipients address.

The two most likely problems are a) It's sitting under a pile of shit in the depot somewhere, possibly because it fell off a conveyor belt or god knows what and someone needs to go and hunt it out or b) they have some problem with the delivery address or something so they aren't sending it out yet.

Depending on their exact scanning process, there's also the possibility that something bizzare has happened like the driver scanned it with the intention of loading it onto his van but then left it at the previous collection point, so their system shows it as having been taken to the new depot but in actual fact it never got on the van. Or it got scanned and routed to your depot but loaded onto the wrong van and is now at the other end of the country and has dropped of the system.


That's all speculation of course. The best thing to do would be to call either Urban Outfitters and get them to sort it out, or if you're feeling frisky call the local depot personally (which as the recipient your entitled to do - they won't give you any shit for it or anything). If it was delivered to the wrong address, then you just kick up some shit with Urban Outfitters and demand that they send out a fresh garment because it's not your problem if Urban Outfitters and the USPS can't get their shit together well enough to deliver a parcel to the intended recipient. Your certainly under no obligation to soak that cost up or go hunting door to door for your clothes.

Charles Kinbote

So I went in to the PO on Friday and after giving them the tracking number they told me that they didn't have it in the back and the tracker would record if they had delivered it. The manager gave me her number and told me to call her on Saturday after she tried some more to sort things out. I entirely spaced, and was wondering; is there any point to calling today? Does she have the entire day completely off?