[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Back to Shipping Glossary” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Back to Shipping Glossary[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Shipping Statuses: What’s the Difference Between “Shipped” and “Delivered”?” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]
Shipping Statuses: What’s the Difference Between “Shipped” and “Delivered”?
One last note to wrap things up, since, according to the keyword data, people aren’t exactly clear on this.
“Shipped” does not mean the same as “Delivered.”
Ignoring, for now, the alternative usages of the words (regarding fictional romances and spiritual status updates, respectively), we do have to admit that the two words have similar denotations. But their connotations in the industry are different.
“Shipped,” in this context, means the same as “departed.” The object is in transit. It is at the origin no more. It has ceased to be stationary. It has gone to meet its consumer.
But—and this is key—it’s not there yet.
“Delivered,” on the other hand, means “go check your front door, quick, before you have to start Mark Rober-ing your pesky neighbors.”
Those of us who are word nerds can definitely understand the confusion. The trouble here lies in the ambiguity of the definition of “shipped.” Unlike most verbs in English (which use the -ed suffix for past tense, and -ing for present tense), the conjugations of “to ship” have slid into different temporal positions.
Allow us to demonstrate. If you’re planning on sending someone a package, you could say, “I will ship it to them,” but you could also say, “I’m shipping it to them.” Similarly, once you’ve handed the parcel to the post office, or the UPS driver, or whomever, you could say “I’ve shipped the item,” even if it has yet to even leave the ZIP code.
What this leads to is a misconception where the status “shipped” implies completion of the task, when in fact it has, as the song says, “only just begun.”
We know, we know. If every language in the world was at a party, English would be the most heavily inebriated of the bunch.
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What Does the Shipping Status “Out for Delivery” Mean?
Here’s one that’s either a blessing, or a curse, depending on your schedule for the day.
“Out for delivery” is exactly what it says on the tin: the parcel is on the delivery vehicle, and the driver is making their rounds. You might be first. You might be last. More likely, you’re somewhere in the middle (statistically, at least). But at some point, that driver will have to get rid of that package, and it’s in their best interest if it’s done somewhere in the vicinity of your house.
Not every carrier treats delivery the same, or even treats delivery the same way all year long. “Delivery driver” is an underappreciated profession, and at peak shipping times, it’s a job that requires long hours, often in unfavorable weather conditions. And sometimes, they’re just trying to get their deliveries done so they can go home and rest (especially around holidays).
So, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise if your package is…treated like a “hit and run.”
On good days, they’ll knock on your door, wait for an answer, have you sign, bid you “good day,” and then carry on their merry way. Over hundreds of stops in a day, though, that can add a lot of time to the process, so a driver may skip some (or all) of those steps, at least on busy days.
And since you don’t always know what time the package will arrive, it can be difficult to make sure the package makes it inside of your house before some misfortune befalls it.
There’s a lot that can go wrong with an unattended package. Whether it’s:
A time-sensitive (or weather-sensitive) package that’s left out while you’re away from home
The malicious thievery of a windy day
The Scourge of the Seven Suburbias, the dreaded Porch Pirates (the worst fate that can befall a package, for sure)
…an “out for delivery” update can feel downright inconvenient, even when you really want the parcel.
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What Does the Shipping Status “Miss-Shipped” or “Missent” Mean?
We all make mistakes from time to time. It’s part of being human (just like our disproportionate interest in seeing objects go from one place to another, i.e. “shipping”). And sometimes, those mistakes happen during the shipping process.
Like other terms in this list, there’s some weird overlap between the terms “miss-shipped” and “missent.” This time, though, there are two different definitions in play.
The first meaning is that the package has been sent to the wrong sorting facility, post office, or other intermediary destination. In other words, it took a right turn at Albuquerque instead of a left.
This is a problem because these destinations are staging areas. A “distribution center” is a hub location where items are sorted and routed to more accurate destinations. Typically, a package will pass through two different centers on its journey—one at the beginning, to put it on the appropriate truck for cross-country travel, and one at the end, where it’s routed to the local office.
Local facilities (like post offices), on the other hand, are the customer-facing portion of the operation. They’re where people can go to mail off packages, and it’s where the shipments are loaded into delivery trucks, which then take the items to their final destination.
In other words, if your package winds up at either the wrong distribution center or local office, it’s not making a b-line for your doorstep like it’s supposed to. Sometimes, it will be close (e.g. a post office for a neighboring ZIP code in the same city), but other times it won’t. And it’s hard to delivery your parcel to you in Queens when it’s sitting in a post office in LA.
In this case, the miss-shipped/missent status means “hang on, we gotta put it back on the truck and send it in the other direction.”
The second meaning is kind of the opposite. While the USPS most commonly deals with “sent to the wrong facility” errors, sometimes retailers will deal with a different error: sending the wrong item (albiet usually to the correct address).
Occasionally, when orders are being fulfilled, there are mixups, and customers are sent another customer’s purchase, or in other cases, a similar—but not identical—product to the one they ordered.
In this case, it’s a “hold on, let us swap that out real quick.”
The linguistic difficulty here is that, while we could easily assign one word (say, “missent”) to the meaning of “right product, wrong place,” and the other (“miss-shipped,” for instance) to “right place, wrong product,” nobody in the industry apparently does that.
Which isn’t at all an irritation for those of us in the industry who are word nerds. Nope. Not losing a wink of sleep over it.
(Maybe we can turn it into a hashtag movement. #justiceforbradswife worked, didn’t it?)
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What Does the Status “Shipping Label Created” Mean?
This…this is a weird one, but it has a logical explanation.
Quick lesson on logistics: the way you get any status update in the first place comes down to labels. These days, pretty much every piece of parcel mail has a label, and all of those are computer generated. The reason a handwritten label won’t do is because the primary purpose of the label is to put a barcode on the package.
This makes them scannable and easy to read for computers, which means packages can be tracked as they enter and leave facilities.
Your package was picked up by the carrier? They scanned it, and you got the “departed” status update. It reached a sorting facility? It got scanned again, and now you know it’s in Kansas (though you probably don’t know why).
This system works great, all the way to when they scan it and leave it at your door. At least, it does when the package is actually scanned.
Sometimes, when retailers hand off the package to the carrier, the carrier fails to scan it before loading it into the truck and sending it off to the next destination. In this case, you’ll get one of two confusing status updates, depending on whether the retailer dropped it off with the carrier, or the carrier picked up the package at the retailer’s warehouse.
The former results in a “Shipping Label Created, USPS Awaiting Item” status. The latter results in a “Shipment Received, Package Acceptance Pending” status. Both mean the same thing: the item is in transit already, but the USPS employee missed the scan before sending it on.
Shipments aren’t officially considered “accepted” by the USPS until they are properly labeled and successfully scanned (which is why you’re getting the error status). This status means they’ve missed it thus far, but it won’t be too long before the error is corrected (most likely at the next sorting facility).
So fret not! Your precious parcel is still proceeding on the proper path.
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Back to Shipping Glossary” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Back to Shipping Glossary[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”What Does the Shipping Status “Departed” Mean?” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]
What Does the Shipping Status “Departed” Mean?
Don’t get too excited when you see this one—it doesn’t mean it’s almost at your door.
(Also, avoid the inclination to become morose: it doesn’t stand for “dearly departed” either.)
“Departed” means the item has been boxed, labeled, and put on a truck. Unless we’re referring to same-day delivery services (like the aforementioned food conveyance systems), this is almost never the same vehicle as the one that will bring it to your house.
Instead, this vehicle is headed to another location. In most cases, this is a distribution center, where it will be sorted and put on another truck, which will head for another distribution center. From there, it’s usually sent to the local delivery center (such as the post office). Only then will it be sorted, put on a delivery vehicle, and sent to your location.
In other words, “departed” is more “Frodo has left the shire” than “The Eagle has landed.”
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Back to Shipping Glossary” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Back to Shipping Glossary[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Shipping Status: What Does “Ready to Ship” Mean?” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]
Shipping Status: What Does “Ready to Ship” Mean?
“Ready to ship” is the precursor to “departed.” Contrary to popular belief, retailers, and their suppliers, don’t always have enough inventory to meet spikes in demand.
Usually, they will try to avoid issues by keeping sufficient stock, resupplying regularly, and by disallowing purchases of out-of-stock items. These systems aren’t foolproof, though, and the “out of stock” sign doesn’t always go up when it should, which leaves some customers to wind up purchasing items that aren’t currently on hand.
Bottom line: there are numerous ways a business can find itself coming up short on inventory, so most will commit items that are present in inventory to orders as they start to fill them (so they don’t double commit a product). Once the product is pulled, packaged, and ready to load onto a truck, they mark it “ready to ship.”
Kind of like the attractive leads in a crime drama who always bicker with one another.
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Back to Shipping Glossary” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Back to Shipping Glossary[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”2-Day vs. Next-Day vs. Overnight Shipping Definitions and Comparisons ” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]
2-Day vs. Next-Day vs. Overnight Shipping Definitions and Comparisons
If you need a package to arrive “ASAP,” carriers are willing to accommodate with top-tier shipping options (though, even “premium” designations are currently up for debate, with retailers like Amazon positioning 2-day shipping as a “standard” option).
It used to be that you’d have to wait a week or so for a package no matter what you did. The idea of getting something as soon as you ordered it was the realm of science fiction and fantasy, and until we could figure out how to get Scotty to beam something to us, it would stay that way.
Well, where there’s an overzealous desire for increased profits, there’s a way. Retailers started to realize that consumers wanted the convenience of shopping online from home, with the timeliness of picking something up from the store. So, businesses started building whole logistics processes around coming as close to that reality as possible.
This sort of “here as soon as you want it” delivery comes in a few different forms, based on the business, the destination, and a few other factors.
The most common (and most famous) is Amazon’s Prime Delivery. It’s something Amazon has achieved in large part thanks to a wide network of distribution centers that put most of the country within striking distance of delivery vans.
But it’s not just “The Everything Store.” Other retailers have worked toward similar delivery schedules, and even third-party sellers on Amazon Marketplace do it.
2-day shipping is definitely fast, but it’s not technically the fastest delivery method available. If you feel you can’t live without the item that extra day, you can get it “overnight” or “next-day delivery.” Both of these options (which, like express and expedited, are largely synonymous) typically involve transportation via aircraft to get the package there on time.
Normal packages, in theory, would:
Go on a truck
Go to a distribution center
Be placed on another truck
Be sent to another distribution center
Get put on a delivery truck
Then finally dropped off at your door
Overnight and next-day, on the other hand, takes the package straight to the airport, put it on a plane that flies through the night, then deliver it to the distribution center in time for it to be loaded on the delivery truck in the morning, so it can be taken straight to the destination.
Beyond that, there are often different overnight or next-day “tiers,” based on how early you want the shipment to arrive. FedEx, for example, has FedEx Standard Overnight, FedExPriority Overnight, and FedEx First Overnight, each which promise delivery by afternoon, mid-morning, and early morning, respectively.
And if you really gotta shave off that last 8–12 hours of shipping time, some retailers, in some locations, offer “same-day” delivery.
Same-day delivery is basically what you’re getting with “in-store pickup” and other grocery pickup options. You order the item, and within the same day, it’s ready for you to snag and bring home. Some businesses take it even further, and leverage the availability of existing crowd-sourced logistics systems (i.e DoorDash and the like) to deliver it to you.
It’s not quite teleportation, but at least you can get your Baby Yoda plushie before the end of the week without having to leave your house.
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What Is “Priority Shipping”?
Here’s an odd one. “Priority shipping” is a term used almost exclusively by the United States Postal Service. In fact, they’ve even registered “Priority Mail” as a trademark, so perhaps even the local mailman has to stake his claim somewhere.
Priority is the USPS’s expedited/express shipping option, though that might get confusing here in a moment. Priority shipments have a delivery window of one to three business days, though that’s not a guarantee (remember that part; it’s important for later).
Priority is also a step up from First Class Mail, which sounds pretty upper class, especially if you’ve ever had the privilege of being shipped first class yourself (as in, flying first class). Really, it’s just a designation based on who’s shipping the item and what’s being shipped (with things like business marketing materials taking lower priority than personal mail, thankfully).
Some Priority Mail is priced by weight and destination, though the USPS also offers flat-rate priority boxes—sometimes it’s cheaper, sometimes it’s not, but at least you know what you’re paying.
Finally, USPS also offers the option to ship Priority Mail Express. It’s not necessarily any faster—both boast a delivery window of one to three business days—but unlike regular Priority Mail, Express guarantees delivery in that window. So, the next time you need to get a cursed golden ring to a fiery volcano…maybe try that.
[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Back to Shipping Glossary” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″] Back to Shipping Glossary[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Expedited vs. Express Shipping: What Are They, and How Are They Different?” _builder_version=”4.17.3″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]
Expedited vs. Express Shipping: What Are They, and How Are They Different?
The next tier on our list of shipping speeds is “expedited shipping.” What makes expedited shipping different from standard and economy is a “direct flight”: expedited shipments are loaded into trucks with only expedited parcels, all going to the same distribution center. Then, the truck makes a b-line for that destination.
No other destinations, no other stops (well, except, you know, to get gas and “drain the radiator,” as they say).
Here again, though, there’s a lot of overlap and interchangeability between the term “expedited shipping” and “express shipping.” Depending on the carrier/retailer, there may or may not be a difference. Typically, only one of the two options will be offered. In this case, the one that is offered usually means two-day shipping, or something between two-day and next day shipping.
When both are offered, though, just like with standard and economy, “express” will be the faster method, while “expedited” will simply mean “standard, but with a little extra hustle.”
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What Is “Standard Shipping”?
Not all carriers and retailers offer an economy option. In fact, it’s more common for them to offer a “standard shipping” option (probably something to do with avoiding the negative connotation that comes with “economy”)
Standard isn’t much different than economy; in fact, when economy isn’t an option but standard is, standard effectively functions as the economy option. The only real difference here is that, when both are options, standard is always slightly faster than economy (but only marginally so, if at all).
“Why the distinction, then?” you ask.
Well, while the difference is marginal for domestic shipping, it apparently makes a more significant difference when shipping internationally. For domestic shipments, though, most of the time the difference in price and delivery time isn’t sufficient to set Standard apart. Either you’re looking for the cheapest shipping possible, or you’re looking for something more speedy.