While expecting your item, the tracking status can stay on a specific update for several days.
The first problem at that point is that most carriers don’t help when recipients ask about anything concerning tracking.
Instead, they only help the senders as they are contracted to them. Getting ignored as the recipient sucks and brings about untold anxiety, especially when expecting a time-sensitive or expensive item.
From our combined experience receiving more than a thousand packages annually, we noticed that Free third-party tracking sites offer a better job of giving the correct status of a stuck package.
Why Do Package Statuses Not Move For Days Among Most Carriers?
Missed Scans
Most carriers don’t scan packages as soon as an item makes all the steps of the journey.
Such carriers do so as a measure of saving time, as arguably, scanning takes so much time.
Due to missed scans, we have had scenarios where items were stuck on a specific status for days and then jumped to “Out for delivery” without anything new in between.
Sadly, due to missed scans, many anxious recipients end up worrying about their items without having a proper clue on where exactly they are and which date they can set aside to receive the delivery.
Bugged Tracking
During the peak times such as around Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year there are millions of items getting tracked, which easily leads to bugged tracking.
As expected, it’s impossible to see anything new on the tracking page should you be facing bugs on the tracking page.
Depending on the cause of the glitch, several days might pass before the tracking page works.
In other carriers’ tracking pages such as OnTrac, you will see them telling you “403 Forbidden.”
Temporary Loss
Most items get temporarily lost due to misplacements.
When that happens, the carriers buy time as they work on retrieving the item. As that happens, there is no new update on the tracking page since there is no relevant scan made on the item.
The problem is that carriers don’t notify the recipients whenever items get lost temporarily or otherwise. The recipient has to contact the sender, who will in turn contact the carrier to pick it up from there.
Why Use Free Third-party Tracking Sites Instead?
After getting the tracking number from the sender, we usually recommend that you paste it on Third-party tracking sites for the reasons below:
More Details Whenever An Item Is Stuck
When I ordered a Car Stereo system from AliExpress last year, Cainiao tracking showed, “Processing delay at sorting center” for several days.
I didn’t know what they meant by that.
Now, I pasted my tracking number on Parcelsapp, one of the free third-party tracking sites.
Upon checking, they showed me “Restricted Item- Battery Item” as you can see from my screenshot below.
That confirmed that AliExpress kept my item aside for further inspection as they assumed that it contained a battery.
Upon further inspection later that afternoon, Parcelsapp updated that my item was then taken to the departure transport hub.
The funny bit is that the Standard AliExpress Cainiao tracking still showed that my item still had a processing delay at the sorting center!
Ease Of Use
Getting the most out of package tracking sites is easy. Just paste the tracking number on the provided prompt on the homepage, and you will get the tracking details right away.
You don’t even need to sign up, which makes everything more seamless and faster.
Ability To Track Packages From More Than 100 Carriers
You can track packages from more than 175 Postal carriers using your preferred language using Third-party sites such as 17Track and Parcelsapp.
With that in mind, you have the convenience that you can track your item your way, in whatever language you so wish.
Just so you know, all the carrier categories we have featured on our website can get seamlessly re-tracked using Free third-party tracking sites such as Parcelsapp and 17Track.
