Ask HN: Why doesn't UPS show tracking history anymore? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why doesn't UPS show tracking history anymore?

13 pointsgnicholas8 comments

I've been tracking packages recently and noticed that UPS only shows the most recent location of my packages. It used to show the entire history, which was useful because it was easier to tell when something went wrong.

All other shippers we use (FedEx, DHL, Amazon) seem to still show full histories. Anyone have an idea why UPS would have changed this?

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I won't speculate on a reason why, but this information now only seems available when logged into UPS. The public information is more limited and has a "want to see more? log in..." kind of prompt at the bottom.

If I log into my account and look up the same package I can see all the details I would normally expect.

Hm, looks like when you sign up for an account they auto-enroll you in their email lists, both for package tracking and for spam. It's not too hard to unenroll from the latter, but this sheds some light on why they'd be nudging people in the direction of account creation.

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Like kup0 also just guessing, I would assume they would have eventually made this private so that porch pirates had less information available to target victims. If a login is required that opens possibilities for rate limiting and easier abuse detection. This could also be to rate limit 3rd party businesses scraping their data. I could be giving them too much credit.

[Edit] Thinking this through a bit more, this could also be to funnel 3rd party businesses into paying for authenticated access to an API and perhaps even pay for different rate-limit plans.

Are you in the USA? UPS collaborates with the USPS. I don't know who does what, but it appears that when packages pass between them, they lose track of it. I've had this happen a couple times during holiday season. I tracked an UPS package from the sender, it became "lost" for a week, then UPS suddenly located it and delivered. I've talked to guys at the local post office and their warehouse is a black box during the holidays, things go in and it's a mystery when they will come out.

This wasn't a SurePost package, just a regular UPS delivery. But yeah, SurePost can be extra tricky since USPS is also involved. The upside is that they can be delivered 7 days a week, which is unusual.

It's just broken.

I've had shipments report as "loading on the truck" as the driver was carrying the package up my front walk.

I don't know their true reasoning, but you can create a free UPS.com account and view the full tracking history. At least, I could.

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