Shipping Services Limit Access for Deliveries App
Many things have changed over the years, and unfortunately we’re no longer able to maintain the same service that so many of you have come to rely on. Deliveries relies on many different shipping companies, and without their help it’s not possible for the app to continue working the way you expect.
It’s likely that over time, more services in Deliveries will no longer show tracking information directly in the app. You won’t see the delivery date, the map route, or any of the details, and you won’t get notifications about changes to the status. You will need to use the “View Online” button to see your tracking information on the shipping company’s web site.
At the current time, Deliveries seems to be able to show shipping information from major U.S. shipping companies like the United States Postal Service and UPS, but over the course of the last few months, Amazon deliveries have stopped working.
Deliveries used to be able to track Amazon shipments just from an order link, but that is no longer possible.
MacRumorsI can’t imagine Deliveries was doing anything nefarious, although I guess I’d be curious to hear from FedEx and Amazon why they revoked API access to the app. I suspect I’d be unimpressed with their “we think the best way for customers to track their packages is from our app” answer, though.
Anyway, I have switched over to Parcel for now, although I really don’t like its UI as much as Deliveries, but given it seems to still work with the shipping companies I tend to use, it’s functional…for now. If this is part of shipping companies revoking API access from well-behaved devs, maybe their days are numbered as well.
Previously:
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Amazon is still working fine for me (via account, not order link). I also tried Parcel and found its UI to be comparatively unrefined.
I'll probably stick with it until Amazon, UPS and USPS break. Thus far it's just been FedEx and I get relatively few packages.
It'd sure be nice if the developer could document what services were expected to fully work in Deliveries, but I can't find any evidence and am reduced to trial and error.
Amazon still seems to work great via the login method where it just scrapes the order page. FedEx also seems to work fine for me since the 9.3.2 update two weeks ago whose only release notes are "fixed issues with FedEx."
I wish the blog post had more information as to exactly what issues he's been encountering maintaining support for these services.
I’m on 9.3.2 and Fedex packages simply report, “Tracking information for this shipment cannot be shown directly in Deliveries.”
Amazon scraping seems to work alright as long as my login persists, which I feel like isn’t the case on my phone.
Agreed that Parcel doesn’t look as nice, and I have zero interest using a third-party sync service instead of iCloud. Deliveries presents the option to use iCloud or Junecloud sync.
