So I bought a few things from a supplier in alibaba, and they responded quickly and shipped the items through UPS. These things are supposed to be at my door this thursday. But as I was tracking the package's progress, I noticed a few oddities:

15/05/2025 Label Created​

15/05/2025 We Have Your Package, Wenzhou, China​

15/05/2025 Wenzhou, China​

15/05/2025 Shanghai, China​

16/05/2025 Narita, Japan​

16/05/2025 Anchorage, AK, United States​

17/05/2025 Louisville, KY, United States​

19/05/2025 Narita, Japan​

19/05/2025 Shanghai, China​

19/05/2025 Narita, Japan​

19/05/2025 Anchorage, AK, United States​

20/05/2025 Louisville, KY, United States​

The thing has gone through China, Japan, Alaska and Kentucky twice! .... is this normal? ... Are couriers really that incompetent?

 

It happens. Ive shipped stuff to the city next to me about 30mins away and its gone out of country before. Probably just got mixed in the wrong bin.

 

Had it happen as well albeit not quite so extreme. Both the USPO and UPS. FedEx, so far, has a far better record these days. Have had problems with FedEx before GPS came about. One of the funniest (if it can be called funny) was the picture of the package hanging from the driveway gate as proof of delivery. I don't have a gate... And, apparently, whosever gate it was kept the package like a bad neighbor. USPO has several major import sorting centers. Leaves the boat/plane, goes through the Customs warehouse somewhat quickly most times, enters the major USPS import/regional sorting center, never leaves, just vanishes without a trace. Would make Harry Houdini proud. The Chicago center is the worst but the New Jersey center is a close second. Miami and Los Angeles have their act together. The local USPS sorting centers can also get it all screwed up and bounce it back and forth and all around like doing the Hokey Pokey.

 

Probably just a glitch.

 

One thing that's happened to me twice already is that aliexpress lost the package and it's never delivered. It's flagged as delivered in their website, but the pictures in their webpage "proving" that the package was delivered are just black squares.

They kept asking me for "proof" that the packages were *not* delivered, and I kept telling them that it's impossible to *prove* the absence of something that was not delivered in the first place. ... they never honored their "delivery guarantee" pledge and I never got my money (nor the packages) back ...

That's why I don't order items from aliexpress with more value than a few tens of dollars anymore, and try to contact the sellers directly instead.

 

China Post in the last few years has been almost perfect unlike the prior years. It's been the USPS at fault for me. It seems to have helped with the aggregation of the smaller packages into a larger package (done for shipping cost savings even though I am charged shipping for each of the small packages and not for the larger cheaper one) that has surprisingly helped with overall package delivery. The smaller individual packages were more likely to get hung up in the USPS automatic handling and routing machinery and be eaten/destroyed. Aggregating them into combined/larger packages helped immensely. I did have a problem with a larger package holding a kilo brick of tea that got ripped open and then apparently scraped up off the floor and stuffing it back into the bag. The seller tried to convince me that the tea was still good even with all the dirt, Styrofoam bits, and various other contaminants in the floor sweepings. AliX didn't agree with the vendor but it was soon after that AliX quit selling tea. I've restrained myself from ordering anything from china until this tariff crap gets resolved and I know the real overall cost.

 

It's been the USPS at fault for me

That won't be a problem with the de minimus exemption revoked for small dollar amount packages. USPS isn't setup to collect tariffs.

 

So I bought a few things from a supplier in alibaba, and they responded quickly and shipped the items through UPS. These things are supposed to be at my door this thursday. But as I was tracking the package's progress, I noticed a few oddities:

15/05/2025 Label Created​

15/05/2025 We Have Your Package, Wenzhou, China​

15/05/2025 Wenzhou, China​

15/05/2025 Shanghai, China​

16/05/2025 Narita, Japan​

16/05/2025 Anchorage, AK, United States​

17/05/2025 Louisville, KY, United States​

19/05/2025 Narita, Japan​

19/05/2025 Shanghai, China​

19/05/2025 Narita, Japan​

19/05/2025 Anchorage, AK, United States​

20/05/2025 Louisville, KY, United States​

The thing has gone through China, Japan, Alaska and Kentucky twice! .... is this normal? ... Are couriers really that incompetent?

That routing looks pretty suspicious. Not so much that it went through the same hub more than once, but that it went from KY back to Narita. That might have been a mistake or possibly a customs issue.

In general, package routing can seem inefficient when the route taken by a single package is examined. But it's not a matter of being incompetent, it's a combination of factors. Each carrier plans their routing schedules attempting to optimize overall performance based on typical source/destination volumes, available resource utilization, and facility locations and capacities. They don't care whether a given package follows the most efficient route individually, only whether the aggregate package flow is as optimized as possible. On top of that, carriers have lots of arrangements with other carriers. So a package destined for a particular country might be automatically handed off to a second carrier and, in getting to the hand-off location, might go through a particular facility. After getting handed off, it might come back to a facility located in the same city but that is the second carrier's facility. It might seem like it would make sense to just put the package on a truck and send it from the first carrier's facility to the second carrier's facility. But that requires resources allocated for that purpose. But if you are already sending a large volume of packages to a different city to hand them off, combining all of the packages into a single shipment might not cost much more and than just sending the ones that have to go there and it frees up a lot of resources that you may or may not even have available to break the shipment apart.

 

That routing looks pretty suspicious. Not so much that it went through the same hub more than once, but that it went from KY back to Narita. That might have been a mistake or possibly a customs issue.

In general, package routing can seem inefficient when the route taken by a single package is examined. But it's not a matter of being incompetent, it's a combination of factors. Each carrier plans their routing schedules attempting to optimize overall performance based on typical source/destination volumes, available resource utilization, and facility locations and capacities. They don't care whether a given package follows the most efficient route individually, only whether the aggregate package flow is as optimized as possible. On top of that, carriers have lots of arrangements with other carriers. So a package destined for a particular country might be automatically handed off to a second carrier and, in getting to the hand-off location, might go through a particular facility. After getting handed off, it might come back to a facility located in the same city but that is the second carrier's facility. It might seem like it would make sense to just put the package on a truck and send it from the first carrier's facility to the second carrier's facility. But that requires resources allocated for that purpose. But if you are already sending a large volume of packages to a different city to hand them off, combining all of the packages into a single shipment might not cost much more and than just sending the ones that have to go there and it frees up a lot of resources that you may or may not even have available to break the shipment apart.

Makes sense ... question, is there a way to ask a courier to consolidate packages from different suppliers and then send them all as a single package so that transport would be cheaper and more efficient? ... and another plus (at least for me) would be that a single shipment is declared to my customs agent, cutting significant import services costs ...

 

One thing that's happened to me twice already is that aliexpress lost the package and it's never delivered. It's flagged as delivered in their website, but the pictures in their webpage "proving" that the package was delivered are just black squares.

They kept asking me for "proof" that the packages were *not* delivered, and I kept telling them that it's impossible to *prove* the absence of a something that was not delivered in the first place. ... they never honored their "delivery guarantee" pledge and I never got my money (nor the packages) back ...

That's why I don't order items from aliexpress with more value than a few tens of dollars anymore, and try to contact the sellers directly instead.

In the many, many AliXpress orders I have made, I have never had them do anything like that. In fact, I just received a full refund for a package I did receive, as they claimed I didn't receive it. But I was going to seek a refund on the item because the seller had made a misleading representation—so it's a wash.

I have also received the "delivery guarantee" payment even when I did receive the package on time.

 

In the many, many AliXpress orders I have made, I have never had them do anything like that. In fact, I just received a full refund for a package I did receive, as they claimed I didn't receive it. But I was going to seek a refund on the item because the seller had made a misleading representation—so it's a wash.

I have also received the "delivery guarantee" payment even when I did receive the package on time.

Glad to hear your experiences haven't been that bad ... I guess they treat people differently depending on the package's destination.

 

Makes sense ... question, is there a way to ask a courier to consolidate packages from different suppliers and then send them all as a single package so that transport would be cheaper and more efficient? ... and another plus (at least for me) would be that a single shipment is declared to my customs agent, cutting significant import services costs ...

That's going to depend on a lot of factors, possibly under the control of different entities. You'd need to ask the vendor you are ordering from what is and is not possible.

Also, there's no guarantee that consolidating packages from different suppliers would necessarily be cheaper or more efficient.

 

15/05/2025 Label Created​

15/05/2025 We Have Your Package, Wenzhou, China​

15/05/2025 Wenzhou, China​

15/05/2025 Shanghai, China​

16/05/2025 Narita, Japan​

16/05/2025 Anchorage, AK, United States​

17/05/2025 Louisville, KY, United States​

19/05/2025 Narita, Japan​

19/05/2025 Shanghai, China​

19/05/2025 Narita, Japan​

19/05/2025 Anchorage, AK, United States​

20/05/2025 Louisville, KY, United States​

With those many miles, your package has now been upgraded to Platinum status in UPS’s frequent flyer program.

 

With those many miles, your package has now been upgraded to Platinum status in UPS’s frequent flyer program.

So you can expect a delay in its arrival, as it is now using the earned miles to go to India.

 

It all depends on the tracking software. Some are more precise than other very vague ones. My favorite is All-in-One Global Package Tracking | 17TRACK . 17 Track incorporates many trackers and magically is is more precise than the ones incorporated in it. Yeah, I know, sounds like BS. Can't explain it, but it excells somehow using the tracking data provided by various carriers giving in most cases more verbose and accurate tracking results. Seems most vendor sites tracking data support linking leaves a lot to be desired that 17 Track fixes by giving a more complete and meaningfully displayed result. "Support 2500+ carriers and 190+ airlines worldwide". Try it and see... Shipping from a site in Japan directly to a site in Kansas without going through a port or customs is really suspiciously short on data. Don't beleive it's true... FWIW

 

I have also received the "delivery guarantee" payment even when I did receive the package on time.

On AliX I ignore the "Late Guarantee Coupons" as I probably won't even use that vendor again (which is what they expect you to do)... AliX vendors have always played games with price and shipping charges. Such as setting the product price very low in order that when sorting for the lowest price their item is the lowest and hope you don't notice that their shipping price is the highest. I've seen outrageous shipping prices for cheap items. THEN... They started playing the TEMU game, buy 10$ and get FREE shipping, but they jacked up the per item prices to cover the free shipping. etc. etc. etc. I am a big fan of the eBay "Lowest price INCLUDING shipping" price sorting tool. But, eBay's tracking link is short on information so, once again, 17 Track!

 

Makes sense ... question, is there a way to ask a courier to consolidate packages from different suppliers and then send them all as a single package so that transport would be cheaper and more efficient? ... and another plus (at least for me) would be that a single shipment is declared to my customs agent, cutting significant import services costs ...

They do this automatically when possible.

 

Update: my package has arrived in Monterrey, it seems that everything is a-ok and that it will be delivered on time

 

 

Yet another crazy story, keep in mind that the package's destination is Monterrey, Mexico ... and it was supposed to be delivered today! :

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