DPD Track app

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!

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.

For just tracking, try putting the number into

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

That should be:

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.

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:

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

Careless?

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

Theo

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.

Ah right - just done a search for Courier tracking API, seems like there are lots of them.

I still might have expected a bit more to it than "our data is accessible to all". But then so is gridwatch data.

Definitely bookmarked as some couriers seem to make you go through hoops of unnecessary information. And checking a link via my mobile gmail app cost me £5.50 in data (55Mb at 10p/Mb), presumbably in part due to all the images it had to pull (not really got to the bottom of that).

Well it's all on GoDaddy so anyone's guess.

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

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.

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'.

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.