How To Improve Package Tracking

Something that ought to exist:

Real-time package tracking.

I don’t mean real-time like UPS/FedEx claim to have now, in which your package status gets updated whenever it is “checked-in” somewhere. I don’t care where my package is at the end of the day - I’d like to know where it is now. Okay, so it’s on the truck for delivery as of 5:24 A.M. - how does that give me the slightest clue about when it might be showing up at my door? How can I plan for that?

Get some GPS - or better yet, use the GPS you most likely already have for navigation to send information back to a mapping service that I can subscribe to using my tracking number. You already know which truck my package is on - so I ought to be able to see its location updated constantly or “watch” it drive down the highway if I feel like it (like you can “watch” your plane fly on most flights nowadays).

Maybe I also want to set a preference to send me an SMS or IM or Email or Twitter notification when the truck reaches a certain street so I know I have approximately X amount of time to get home, and maybe, if I know where it is and know I won’t be able to make it home to sign for my package, I can send a message to the “driver” letting her know to leave it at my door, or leave it with a neighbor, or not worry about trying to drop it off that day. Save her the hassle of lugging a huge box up to the third (or tenth!) floor just to have to lug it right back down again.

The first company to do this will explode with growth. I guarantee it.

At the very least - please let me easily subscribe to a feed to track my package. Don’t make me have to Google some sketchy service to do what you should already be doing.