Comment · Thu, March 16, 2017
Meaning of UPS tracking information?
Original post in this thread
Jave_Dohnson · 1 points
I ordered Semax last week, to be shipped to the Netherlands using the standard shipping method. As of march 13, according to the UPS tracking website, my package has been 'transferred to Local Post Office for Delivery'. Last location was Los Angeles, CA, United States; then it says 'Left At: Postal Service - Non United States'. Is there any way to track my package from there?
What they were answering
futureflier · 2 points
Probably not, it then goes using the standard basic USPS (not UPS) shipping, so it will probably one day appear in your mailbox
The service description is somewhat confusing, because it looks like UPS will deliver stuff to your country and then it will be delivered by local post, but in fact UPS delivers the package to normal post office in US and thats it
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb
UPS delivers it to the specific country's postal system in Los Angeles. So in this specific instance, UPS gives it to PostNL in LosAngeles, who then take it on a plane to the Netherlands. Once they get it, it gets a new tracking number for the local country. That is given to us the following Monday after a shipment. Once it arrives, it needs to be cleared by customs. After it gets cleared, then the local tracking number updates like a regular PostNL tracking number. It also updates the UPS website with the tracking updates.
Now that update process only works in certain countries that support tracking updates back to UPS. That's most large countries. There is a list on the UPS MI site that tells which countries participate in the update program. The ones that don't will not pass the data back to UPS. Most can still be tracked on the local country's site, though. However, some smaller and less developed countries do not update at all. That's just a part of the local country's postal system.
I would love to just use USPS First Class like we used to. However, USPS completely screwed their systems up. We had more lost packages than you can imagine, and even ones going to the complete incorrect countries. So while the UPS Mail Innovations is a little confusing, we at least have a MUCH higher success rate in packages getting there.