UPS Mail Innovations, does offer some tracking, it is not as detailed as normal UPS tracking.
It will looks something like this. No estimated delivery date is generally provided and it can a few days to update.
Jul 20 2019 Package transferred to Post Office
Jul 20 2019 Package enroute to USPS for induction
Jul 20 2019 Package received by dest MI facility
Jul 16 2019 Package transferred to dest MI facility Fife, WA
Jul 15 2019 Package processed by UPS MI Fife, WA
Jul 15 2019 Package received for processing Fife, WA
Jul 15 2019 Shipment tendered to UPS MI Redmond, WA
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Worth noting that the answers for international customers are often different than those for domestic customers with these sorts of questions.
Thank you so much. Now I'm more confident in subscribing. Do you happen to know if physical copies of the product tend to arrive on release? I read some threads in which the Core Rulebook copies were arriving Aug 1 and I think that's really interesting if applies to most of the products.
With subscriptions, typically product will arrive at most locations before the street date. If you're in the US, that's almost certain. I'm in Canada and in over a decade of monthly products, I don't think I've had more one time that something didn't show up before street date.
As Steve says, international experience is different. For one, I get zero tracking. I'm typically five business days for a product to arrive from when Paizo ships it. But again, I'm in Canada, so not terribly far.
To be honest, I really don't mind the lack of tracking since shipments are generally so reliable. Also, in the one time that a shipment didn't show up, after a couple weeks to confirm it was lost, Paizo re-shipped to me. The original book did eventually show up, something like four months later, with the envelope very, very scuffed. Clearly got stuck somewhere in sorting machinery at the post office or in a truck and nobody found it for a long time.
Bottom line... regular shipments are pretty much like clockwork.
Chief Technical Officer
|
Mail Innovations tracking is a complicated subject. In case you don't know how MI works, here's a quick summary: They take the package most of the way to the destination, and then insert the package into the local mail stream for delivery by the USPS (or for international shipments, the local postal service).
This strategy provides a reasonable speed for a reasonable price (compared to other services), but one of the drawbacks is that the transition from MI to USPS (or whoever) can cause a delay in tracking information getting updated. And since that transition happens shortly before delivery, it's not uncommon for packages to be delivered before the last leg tracking info appears. And in some cases, the "last leg" delivery is via a non-trackable service, so end-to-end tracking isn't available.
All of this is to say that sometimes MI tracking works great, and sometimes it doesn't. Because we don't have assurance that will meet everyone's expectations, we don't promise it.
The situation has been improving, though, and I'm hopeful that one day that will change, at least for most destinations.