4 Ways to Track Your Package
Most people hate the feeling of being out of control and not knowing what is going on. This is one of the reasons why shipping and courier companies provide their customers with tracking information about packages they deliver. The tracking number of a parcel lets you know its whereabouts at any given point of its journey and will help sort things out if the parcel gets lost or delayed while in transit. There are several ways to track a package if you have its tracking number.
Before we dive deeper into the ways to track your package, let’s figure out where you can get a tracking number. Tracking is available for most shipping services provided by major carriers such as the USPS, UPS and FedEx; however, “most” doesn’t mean “all”. The United States Postal Service, for example, does not allow to track First-Class Mail letters (both domestic and international) unless you purchase tracking as an extra service.
If the shipping service you’ve selected does include tracking, you will receive your tracking number once you’ve paid the postage. It can usually be found on the shipping receipt, in the confirmation email if you created a shipping label online, or on the shipping label itself (usually right below the barcode, although this may vary by carrier).
Your package will become trackable once it gets scanned into the carrier’s system, and its tracking information should be updated at every step of its journey. But how do you access this information? Like we’ve said, there are several ways to track your package.
Carrier’s Website
It makes sense that if your carrier provides tracking information, it also provides a tool (or tools) to track packages. Most carriers have a form on their websites where you can enter the tracking number of your parcel to learn its whereabouts. Some carriers also provide additional tracking tools such as bots and apps. For example, the USPS allows to track packages using an app (there are versions for iPhone and Android), by text, or by phone, as well as receive automatic text or email updates.
If you need to track a USPS international package, you should know that it is in fact delivered by two national postal services: the United States Postal Service and the national postal service of the destination country. You can use the tracking tools provided by either of them to track your package; for example, if you ship a package from the US to France, you can use either the USPS website or the La Poste website.
Another thing you should know about using the carrier’s website (which seems obvious but we still feel like we should mention it) is that this method won’t allow you to track packages delivered by other carriers. So you must use the USPS website to track USPS packages, the UPS website to track UPS packages, the FedEx website to track FedEx packages, etc.
Tracking Tools Provided by Online Retailers
Many online shops have their own tracking tools to make it easier for customers to track their orders. In such a case, you should receive the tracking number of your order and a link to the tracking tool in the confirmation email. However, this way of tracking packages has a few downsides. First, tracking tools provided by retailers only allow to track orders purchased from that particular retailer. Second, many small online stores don’t have their own tracking tools.
Package Tracking Aggregators
Package tracking aggregators are services that allow to track packages delivered by multiple carriers. Some of them only require you to enter the tracking number because they are able to recognize the carrier by the tracking number format; others are not able to do this and will require you to select the carrier from a provided list.
Some tracking aggregators are websites, some are apps, some are available in both formats. Most of them offer users a variety of features such as tracking multiple packages at once, storing tracking numbers for further use, push notifications about tracking status updates, etc.
PostageMaker
You might think that PostageMaker is just another tracking aggregator, but it is so much more than that! Parcel tracking is just one of the many services we provide. We are first and foremost a shipping label printing service that allows users to print USPS and UPS shipping labels at discounted rates and with no monthly fee.
Our tracking tool is available to all registered PostageMaker users. All you need to do is sign up for the service (it will only take a couple of minutes), log in to your account, and select the Tracking option from the menu. All that’s left to do is enter the tracking number of your USPS or UPS package in the search line and click Search.