DPD Track app

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

Has anyone attempted to download and setup the DPD App, to work on a mobile phone? All I wanted, was to track my parcel, so I could be in for it's delivery, but it insists you go online, on their website, and give it a tremendous amount of detail - just not relevant to simply track the item. I gave up on it, when it insisted that you provide details of neighbours to leave it with, and a safe place to leave it, and a parcel shop to leave it with - no option to bypass making a definate selection of these places, even worse - it also claims it will leave at these places - AT YOUR RISK.

Going on line to their track page, you can just get what you want, details of where it is supposed to be now. You just need the parcel number, and your postcode.

[Fredxx]

Can you not use your phone browser to check progress? I avoid installing Apps on my phone where possible and often use Chrome as an alternative.

I feel I have enough apps on my phone!

[Bob Eager]

I tried the app on my tablet, and it's 'not optimised'. As in, the display is terrible. And it rarely picks up parcels anyway.

[Theo]

For just tracking, try putting the number into

works with most parcel services.

Tried a DPD number and it does bring up a track log, says who the sender is, but doesn't say which depots it went through. But the official DPD website doesn't give any more information than that so it's just as good..

Theo

[Theo]

That should be:

(for some reason the www has a broken certificate)

[Andy Burns]

Just tried an old DPD number from december on the DPD website, and it still gives me step-by-step depot info and photo of it being handed to me.

[AnthonyL]

How does that work then? Are these courier/parcel systems intending to have open access databases? Or do you just contact each one and ask? Or do they volunteer to be accessible?

It feels a bit spooky that a Russian individual can access all these delivery systems:

Bloody brilliant if all above board

and bloody spooky that the domain (and hence subdomains) isn't covered.

Careless?

[Theo]

I believe the couriers have APIs where third party sites can query package status. For example when you order something and the webshop gives you the parcel tracking info inside their site, they're getting that info from the courier's API. The APIs don't give out personal information (eg they say the depots the parcel has been to, but not the destination address).

I assume there's nothing there that's not available by going to the courier website and typing in the tracking number. They just know the formats of tracking numbers to work out which couriers to search.

Since Parcels App doesn't ask for personal information (delivery postcode etc) it can't show you anything that's behind a 'enter postcode for more details' screen. So they only get what the courier tells them from the tracking number alone.

Maybe there's some cunning traffic analysis the KGB could do (watch all the parcels being sent to Ukraine or something) or it could just be some guy.

Probably. They don't actually advertise the

link, I just mis-remembered when typing it on my phone. The careless bit was me mistakenly adding the www.

Theo

[Andy Burns]

That app can't track my DPD reference that I mentioned earlier, it does claim to have searched DPD, even for DPD to find it, they require postcode as well as reference number.

[AnthonyL]

[Theo]

It worked for a DPD ref for me. Bear in mind there are several kinds of DPD:

dpd.co.uk (red) dpdlocal.co.uk (blue) dpd.com (50+ international firms branded DPD)

Mine was a red. Maybe Parcelsapp doesn't do them all?

Theo

[Peter Johnson]

I've had it on my phone for a while, and use it occasionally, but with none of the aggravation that you mentioned. But usually when I get an email about and intended DPD delivery I click on the link and view the tracking in a browser.

[Sam Plusnet]

That just proves the app is designed to benefit the company, not the customer/W parcel recipient.

I agree with that, but over time it is becoming more and more difficult to 'do things' without using an 'app'.

[Sam Plusnet]

I just tried it in a 'private' browser window. It seems to want to set quite a lot of "default" cookies which seem far from essential. But it was content for me to deselect them.