After you place your order on AliExpress, you will only be asking for a little from the seller to ship your package within the shortest time possible.
However, it’s common nowadays to see “Unshipped” on the tracking page several days after completing your payment.
What gives? How long will such status linger? Is there anything you could do about it? Let’s get to it right away based on our findings.
What Does AliExpress Mean When They Say “Unshipped?”
The “Unshipped” tracking status from AliExpress means that the seller hasn’t handed the package to AliExpress yet.
Reasons Why The Package Status Is Stuck On “Unshipped” For Days
You Ordered Around The Chinese New Year
The Chinese New Year which runs from 10th Feb for two weeks is one of the most valuable holidays among the Chinese. Others prefer to start their holidays in late January until early March.
In such moments, most people including AliExpress sellers travel to their home towns, and everything slows down if not stopping completely.
As such, while you might have placed your order on a specific AliExpress store, it could be that the seller isn’t available to ship it just yet.
Generally, AliExpress gives sellers up to 10 days from when an order was made to create the shipping label, but due to the Chinese holiday, it could take up to 60 days without major consequences for the seller if they don’t ship earlier.
If the seller doesn’t provide a tracking label within these days, your best bet would be to file a dispute whenever the system claims you have an automatic delivery after 60 – 90 days.
In all the moments where your order wasn’t handed over to AliExpress, the tracking status will still show “Unshipped.”
Also Read: What Does Processing At The Sorting Center Mean On AliExpress?
The Order Isn’t Ready Yet
After placing your order, it could be that the seller is working on it already and hopes to work on it in the next couple of days.
Since AliExpress gives sellers 10 days to create a shipping label for the package and 14 days after creating the label to ship a package, the seller might decide to work within this timeframe and work on your order before the allowance expires.
We need to insist that the sellers have 14 days from when the shipping label was created to work on shipping the package. From our research, some sellers replace the tracking numbers slightly before these 14 days expire to give themselves more time to work on your package.
For other sellers, they don’t indicate when their items are out of stock and start working on packages after customers complete the payments.
Depending on how long it takes for the seller to work on your package and hand it over to AliExpress, it might take several days or weeks with the status being “Unshipped.”
About what you can do if your seller keeps on changing the label before the provided 14 days expire, we recommend:
- Check the “Order details”
- The AliExpress system will show when they automatically confirm your delivery (typically between 60 and 90 days depending on your country)
- File a dispute for non-delivery to get a refund. You can screenshot the tracking package showing “Unshipped” as evidence that the package never shipped in the first place.
Bugged Tracking Page
Sometimes, the reason why your package status might not be updating is due to the tracking option not working, especially on the AliExpress Mobile APP.
While the status might show “Unshipped,” the reality could be that the package is on its way to your country.
We see such bugs mostly around 11.11, Black Friday, Christmas, and the Chinese New Year.
Upon reaching out to customer support, they usually give you working tracking numbers, which explains the issue of the bug. When these bugs happen around the holidays, AliExpress usually sorts them out a few days after the festivities are over.
What Do I Do When My Package Status Is Stuck On “Unshipped?”
Track The Package On A PC
If the “Unshipped” update used to appear while using the AliExpress APP, we recommend that you use a PC or the “Desktop Site” prompt in your browser to track the package.
To do so:
- Log into the AliExpress site
- Go to “Orders”
- Hover the mouse around “Track Order” but don’t click it
- With the tracking number seen use Third-party package tracking APPS such as Parcelsapp or 17Track to get the status of your package.
File A Dispute
Filing a dispute in this instance is only based on non-delivery.
In this case, 60 to 90 days depending on your country should have passed, and then under the Order Details section, showed automatic delivery.
From there, file a dispute to get a refund and order elsewhere if the package meant everything to you.
As you can see, we are talking about 2 to 3 months here before you can ask for a refund. This implies that a lot of patience is required whenever dealing with AliExpress.
Talk To An Agent
Since there are high chances that the tracking page isn’t updating due to technical glitches, we recommend that you get in touch with the store where ordered your shipment from and then ask to talk to an agent.
From there, ask the agent for a working tracking number that you can use to track your package on AliExpress or third-party tracking sites.
