When Tracking Does Not Track

[jsburbidge]

 I ordered a book via AbeBooks to be sent from Cape Breton, and a few days later I received an e-mail from Canada Post telling me that the package was in the system and would be delivered on the following Monday, i.e. the 7th of December, between 9 am and 1 pm.

 

It was not delivered. More amusing, by 6 pm that day it still said that it would be delivered by 1 pm that day.

 

On Tuesday morning the tracking information had changed to say that it would be delivered on Wednesday between 9 and 1. Again, not delivered, nor was its status updated, with the status in the evening still pointing back in time.

 

Today it just says "delayed", with no indication at all of where it is in the system other than "in transit".

 

Now, there are at least two problems with this system. The first is a (genuinely) small matter of programming: except for a value of "delivered" the interface should never display a time in the past, which just looks shoddy and lowers trust in the system.

 

The second is more major: this supposed tracking system clearly does not "track" at all, or at least not in the sense that one would expect it to do. I have interacted with other delivery tracking systems which accumulate an impressive number of logged checkpoints from station to station. In this case, the last checkpoint is essentially the entry into the system: on Dec 3 the item was processed in Halifax and two hours later it was "in transit" there, where it has remained since. As it has to be received at a local station before it is sent out to be delivered, it would make sense not to project a delivery date within hours if it has not been thus received (again, this check is a genuinely small matter of programming).

 

But a true tracking system would contain information about which vehicle was carrying an item and where that vehicle was at any given time. "In transit" would be replaced by "on flight X scheduled to arrive in Toronto at time Y" or "on flight Z, currently waiting for a departure time in Montreal", or even (in this case, perhaps)  "in depot at location X waiting to be assigned to flight Y".

 

It does not inspire confidence in a system that it simply says "delayed" with no further specificity; it generates the suspicion that this is merely a euphemism for "misplaced" or "we don't know where it is".

 

(This is rather like the online transit tracking systems drawing on TTC data. They provide both a GPS indicator of where the next bus is and an estimated arrival time. As that time is based on averages it's reasonably reliable at a ten-minute scale but can be wildly out at a one-minute scale; on the other hand the GPS information is concrete, though experience shows it to have about a half-minute lag event the time of update, and therefore strengthens one's confidence in the system as a whole. It also allows one to see that (e.g.) a bus is behind a known accident site and that therefore a projection is likely to be off because of a delay. So, here, the more concrete detail is provided, the more one's confidence in the system as a whole is enhanced, and the more a context is provided for the situations where a general prediction based on average cases fails as a result of unusual circumstances.)

Comments

[graydon]

So far as I can tell, Canada Post has stopped scanning packages except on receipt and on delivery and sometimes at the destination post office. (And at the Mississauga sorting hub, most of the time.)

I have the impression that this is a side effect of a refusal to hire on the part of management. (Who absolutely refuse to create more union jobs for any reason.)

So their already rudimentary tracking system (that scans through locations but not vehicles and has no notion of position) becomes nigh-useless. I am expecting things to get very wobbly indeed as Christmas-during-a-pandemic hits.

[dewline]

Yeah, this is a reluctance on Canada Post management's part that's going to require scolding.

Turning the post office into a Crown corporation may not have been a bad idea in itself, but imposing a profit motive upon it as well was a Mistake.

[graydon]

Public goods are incompatible with profit, yeah.

I would really like to see somebody fix that whole structural mess.