Where do online purchases go between 'dispatch' and received by delivery company?

dragonsinger

I ordered an item from Debenhams on 10th Oct which, according to their website, was dispatched on the 15th. Every day since when I use the 'track you order' link it takes me to the 'Evri' page which says 'we are expecting your package, we will let you know when we have it'.
I can't help wondering where parcels go in between as this has happened a lot recently, anyone got any ideas? 
In my mind package would go from vendor straight to delivery firm, but maybe thats me being crazy lol! 

MyRealNameToo

dragonsinger said:

I ordered an item from Debenhams on 10th Oct which, according to their website, was dispatched on the 15th. Every day since when I use the 'track you order' link it takes me to the 'Evri' page which says 'we are expecting your package, we will let you know when we have it'.
I can't help wondering where parcels go in between as this has happened a lot recently, anyone got any ideas? 
In my mind package would go from vendor straight to delivery firm, but maybe thats me being crazy lol! 

There are no legal definitions so it will heavily depend on what triggers Deb's system to mark something as dispatched. 

Back in my mail-order days (a long time ago) the parcel was marked as "dispatched" as soon as the box was sealed and the shipping label stuck on it. In reality it would be sitting in a bag with lots of other parcels awaiting the courier to come and collect it. 

If you're big enough deals can be done with these firms, for example we would sort parcels by the couriers distribution centres and got a discount for them knowing that each complete bag had to go to the same place rather than them sorting the parcels. It could mean if you were in a less popular area it could take a day or two for a sack to fill whereas for major areas like London they collected multiple times a day. 

In principle there is no reason why this couldn't go further with the company actually deliver them to either one of the 5 hubs or the 27 depots again to reduce costs so evri just moves it to the delivery office and then out to you. You can also get intermediary firms who'll do that sort of work but not delivery to the end customer... UK Mail is similar, they take it from firms sending millions of letters to the RM delivery office and RM do the last leg of the journey. 

Momogeew

The location a parcel sits between scans is what causes the perceived 'delays'.
Order's processed means it'll have been picked/sorted, it could then get scanned as dispatched as it's, technically, ready to be.
It could sit in that limbo for a few days, it then gets handed over to a courier company and they'll scan it as received into the courier company system, it is now in that the self employed individuals are responsible.
Next stage is your local courier collects it from a collection base, he/she is a self employed driver, depending on their level of work ethic depends on the next set of scans before it reaches the customer.
The parcel will get scanned into their own device/service and they are responsible for updating/amending the information about the customers parcel.
Some drivers, efficiently, operate their business and some don't update it at all thus the customer being out of the loop.

sonearandyetsofa

Some automated systems will mark an item as dispatched as soon as the delivery label is printed. Chances are the item in question is still sitting at Debenhams warehouse. It's worth reaching out to ask them what the ETA is, I'd say.

Chrysalis

To me dispatched means its out of my hands.  So e.g. if I sell something on ebay, its not marked as dispatched until I have handed it to someone, some retailers would also only mark as dispatched after its collected by courier.

Sadly its more common now days for dispatched to just mean a label has been printed.

kinger101

The good could be in a warehouse anywhere in the world.  It could be several days or weeks before the UK courier receives it.  Not unusual for tracking details to be generated as soon as the order has been created.