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When you order something online, there’s a good chance it will arrive to your home in the back of a white FedEx truck. After all, this company reportedly ships an average of 18 million packages each day. But if you’re someone who likes to track your purchases from the moment you click the order button to the minute the carrier drops it off at your front door, you might be in for disappointment. FedEx has just made new service changes that affect the ways customers can follow their deliveries. Read on find out what you can no longer do when getting packages from FedEx.
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Customers can no longer track their FedEx packages with the Deliveries app, The Verge reported on April 11. Listed as an “Editor’s Choice” program in the App Store, Deliveries is a popular app that helps people keep track of all their arriving packages from various services in one place. Junecloud, the company behind Deliveries, recently notified users that they would not be able to access FedEx tracking services on the app as the result of recent actions made by the shipping company.
“Unfortunately Fedex has made the decision to block third-party trackers such as Deliveries from their API,” Junecloud tweeted on April 4 in a response to several users questioning why FedEx tracking was not working on their Deliveries app. “We will be removing them from our supported service list in an upcoming update.”
Deliveries initially started in 2006 as a Dashboard widget called “Apple Order Status” before becoming an app in 2008, “shortly after Apple first launched the App Store,” Junecloud developer Mike Piontek explained in a statement on April 5. In its most updated version, the Deliveries app allows users to track their package’s progress on a map, as well as receive notifications if something changes with their shipment and delivery, according to The Verge.
But if you enter a FedEx tracking number now, the app will no longer display an estimated delivery date, current location, or any other information about the package. Instead, users will get prompted to open FedEx’s own tracking page in their web browser to see information on that specific shipment. “This shipment can only be viewed online,” the app now reads for FedEx packages, per The Verge. “Tracking information for this shipment cannot be shown directly in Deliveries.”
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In his statement, Piontek warned users that Deliveries would likely no longer be able to “maintain the same service” it had been providing in the past based on FedEx’s decision. “Deliveries relies on many different shipping companies, and without their help it’s not possible for the app to continue working the way you expect,” he wrote. According to developer, it’s possible that other companies might soon make the same decision as FedEx.
“It’s likely that over time, more services in Deliveries will no longer show tracking information directly in the app. You won’t see the delivery date, the map route, or any of the details, and you won’t get notifications about changes to the status,” Piontek explained. “You will need to use the ‘View Online’ button to see your tracking information on the shipping company’s web site. We understand this will make Deliveries less useful for many of you, and you may decide to take a different approach to tracking your packages. “
This is not the first time shipping companies have changed their services to block Deliveries from showing tracking information for certain packages. According to Junecloud, this has happened in the past with Australia Post, DPD UK, Hongkong Post, Royal Mail, and Swiss Post as well. But as of April 4, there are still more than 20 services that the Deliveries app does support.
This includes retailers like Amazon and Apple, as well as shipping companies such as UPS and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). “For those of you that choose to continue using Deliveries, we’ll do our best to keep making it as useful as we’re able to. Thank you for all of your support over the years,” Piontek wrote in his notice.
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