Gregory's ServerPOV: You made the mistake of trying to track a package in 2024
 144 comments
12
 User: [clicks "no"]  @hosford42 @cozymel @ocean @Blogjackets @ocean Yes, this is why I am happy to pay for my yearly Parcel subscription. @ocean not much better clicking a random reddit link in the search engine. Before I let that bloatware load to completion, I move my mouse to the address bar and change the hostname from reddit to a libreddit instance I trust. Unfortunately, that won't work with parcel tracking. @ocean@raru.re Ooo you got lucky though. 99% of the time when I get a tracking link from a corporation I only a error page that there is no associated package.  *six email notifications while trying to track package* YOUR PACKAGE IS ON ITS WAY YOUR PACKAGE IS NOT YET IN THE SYSTEM YOUR PACKAGE IS DELAYED YOUR PACKAGE HAS SHIPPED! LABEL PRINTED YOUR PACKAGE HAS BEEN DELIVERED @darwinwoodka @ocean Please give me all the label updates. * label was created @ocean the best part is that in the end you'll just notice another line appear in the transit log that says "recipient couldn't be reached, package diverted to pick-up point" and nobody's been to your door all day @shi @sahqon @ocean Did I mention how much fun it is to try to spell out to a voice recognition system a 12-15 character long parcel ID on the phone? Because there seems literally no chance to reach a human operator before identifying yourself with your business transaction. And the parcel number alone was not enough to change the delivery address online, ... One of the moments when one realizes, this is it, why we had to read Kafka in school, to prepare us for these existential phone calls. My fave was when they dead dropped a package at the townhouse next door with a label printed for that address when nobody lives there. Peeled off that label and the one underneath was for a town 200 miles away. I took it back to the package store to reship it Pop up hell. 😑 I’m still waiting on something that I ordered in November that’s been stuck in the black hole that is Customs in NYC since December 12. It’ll probably be expired by the time it actually arrives.   "Privacy policy" 🤣🤣🤣 They've turned the word into its opposite, as corporations and their political friends do with so many words..   @ocean @gardevoir i have to pay for a separate app to track my packages as i refuse to deal with this shit anymore       @joeo10 @ocean well, #AfterShip just works and I use them all the time since I don't want to remember which damn courier any ShutExpress vendor uses... @ocean This uhhhh…. tracks. 😂 I get the we'll-get-you-a-delivery-date-ASAP message, every time I try, and then it just shows up. @ocean @Meyerweb I cannot recommend this app enough: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/parcel/id375589283 Use it constantly. Though, I'm an IT Director and am constantly shipping tech things to staff. @joelhousman @ocean @Meyerweb More and more carriers are cracking down hard on third parties over the past year to encourage lock in. I know several third party apps are having issues seeing them. I know that DHL, FedEx, and UPS are locking down their products.  @ocean I have never seen any good implementation on any website ever of those stupid "do a survey about our site" overlays   @ocean lol I just signed up for their stupid program that texts me updates
@ocean Don't ask what UPS can do for you, ask yourself, what you can do for them 🙃 @ocean Ick! I can’t stand that crap! I use Hush for Safari on Mac. It removes a lot of crap (most all Cookie messages at least). Have a pi-hole on my network so I see no ads while browsing the web. These 2 things make browsing around great. When I have to use our work VPN (which negates my pi-hole), I get slammed with ads. I then realize how truly bad browsing without these things is. @ocean@raru.re this was terrifying, but then I noticed that uBlock shows 42 blocked ads, and it suddenly became even more terrifying.   @ocean ... and uBlock Origin already blocked 42 things ... 🙈 If you want to have an even greater user experience, try open one of that cooking recipe sites on your mobile phone. @ocean Is this what using Chrome is like? This is why I use Firefox with uBlock Origin. @ocean that's why i never use proprietary trackers, just a universal tracker like parcelsapp.com
 @ocean Truly this has become such a problem and I can't believe how few people even seem to realize it. Once upon a time we had to have popup blockers because of this hot mess. Now they just render it in frame so it is 10,000x harder to block. And at least back in the day it was just the low grade sites that did this. Now, just as this image shows, it's the bigger companies themselves who are the worst offenders.  @ocean I don’t need to track its every move from warehousing to shipping to my front door. All I really need is the assurance that my package is “on its way”. I don’t know what these package-tracker apps are for other than to satisfy the human urge to watch paint dry.  @ocean @lisamelton And then it has the gall to tell you “this is the same info our customer service agents see so don’t bother calling us.”   @ocean  And this is why I use client applications for as many things as possible. If there is a desktop application for it, that is likely what I'm using @ocean gotta love that it's this messy with uBlock active. Imagine it wasn't.  @ocean First thing that I do on entirely too many sites now is hit that uBlock Origin shield and then the eyedropper and pick apart their page until it's respectable again.  @ocean I thought we had killed pop up windows but they eventually… popped right back up…   @ocean all the while here (NL) UPS routinely do "fake not home" because apparently their drivers are overworked and it is easier for them to pretend to have tried a delivery to make KPIs... It’s somehow even more horrible to see it laid out here, like a butterfly pinned in a naturalist’s display, than it is when you’re in the middle of it. Just clicking furiously to get through it as quickly as possible.  @ocean Pop-ups, crowded layout, dancing baloney - we've come full circle back to 1990s Web site design. @ocean I have to deal with that site nearly everyday for work and it's an absolute bloated piece of garbage. Even on an overpowered PC it feels super slow and sluggish when creating a label. :dragnangry: @ocean   |
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