USPS Tracking Plus?

[Numo]

I placed an online order the other day and clicked on the link for tracking from the Post Office. Along with the usual tracking info, I noticed the following statement. Anyone heard of this? It seems to say that beginning this fall, you will have to pay a nominal fee for USPS tracking:

“Your item is eligible for USPS Tracking Plus. This feature allows you to buy extended access to your tracking history and receive a statement via email upon request. Without this feature, your regular tracking history is only available on this site until September 20, 2022. To extend your access to this tracking history, select the length of time you would like and confirm your selection. You can only purchase extended history once, so all orders are final and are not eligible for a refund.

Note: For multiple tracking numbers, you can save and continue adding USPS Tracking Plus selections to your cart until you are ready to complete your purchase.
6 Months
$0.99
1 Year
$1.20
3 Years
$1.50
5 Years
$2.00
7 Years
$3.00
10 Years
$4.20”

[chopper]

Ridiculous.

[onthedownlow]

Carriers reuse tracking numbers often, as they sunset the tracking numbers for shipments after a certain date (usually several months down the road, possibly into a a year+).

I haven't looked into it any further details that this post, and maybe I am misinterpreting it, but what I'm seeing if they are offering a service to archive that tracking number for you, if something like that is needed or anticipated to be needed, for a small fee.

I can see this being useful for some businesses, or other personal issues, to maintain that information for several years.

In my work, I know at times I have needed to look up an old tracking number and hopefully see if that information is still out there - sometimes it is months or a year or two later, and other times it will be invalid, or there will be information show up, but then it takes me a moment to realize it is newer information for some other shipment (i.e. they reused the #).

I would pay extra for this, if I felt I needed to on a shipment.

[GGD]

Ammo wrote:
I placed an online order the other day and clicked on the link for tracking from the Post Office. Along with the usual tracking info, I noticed the following statement. Anyone heard of this? It seems to say that beginning this fall, you will have to pay a nominal fee for USPS tracking:

I think you're misinterpreting what they're saying. They're not talking about charging for normal tracking, instead they're offering a service to keep the tracking history for this package online for a longer period if you want to pay for that. Given the Sept date they mention it seems like the standard period to keep tracking records is 4 months, and if you want to keep the tracking for THIS PACKAGE longer than that you can pay extra money.

The only thing I can think of where one might want this is if there's some sort of dispute about delivery with finger pointing between the sender and receiver lasting months.

[Gareth]

GGD wrote:
[quote=Ammo]
It seems to say that beginning this fall, you will have to pay a nominal fee for USPS tracking:

I think you're misinterpreting what they're saying. They're not talking about charging for normal tracking, instead they're offering a service to keep the tracking history for this package online for a longer period if you want to pay for that.
Correct. This option has been around a while. I had a package take so long for delivery (at the height of the pandemic) that the tracking stopped working (it eventually did show up). So, that's another case where this might be useful (although it was an international package so I'm not sure it would have been eligible).

[Numo]

GGD wrote:
[quote=Ammo]
I placed an online order the other day and clicked on the link for tracking from the Post Office. Along with the usual tracking info, I noticed the following statement. Anyone heard of this? It seems to say that beginning this fall, you will have to pay a nominal fee for USPS tracking:

I think you're misinterpreting what they're saying. They're not talking about charging for normal tracking, instead they're offering a service to keep the tracking history for this package online for a longer period if you want to pay for that. Given the Sept date they mention it seems like the standard period to keep tracking records is 4 months, and if you want to keep the tracking for THIS PACKAGE longer than that you can pay extra money.

The only thing I can think of where one might want this is if there's some sort of dispute about delivery with finger pointing between the sender and receiver lasting months.
Ahh . . . thanks for explaining this. Considering how inexpensive this service is, I may just do the 10 year period.

[GGD]

Ammo wrote:
[quote=GGD]
[quote=Ammo]
I placed an online order the other day and clicked on the link for tracking from the Post Office. Along with the usual tracking info, I noticed the following statement. Anyone heard of this? It seems to say that beginning this fall, you will have to pay a nominal fee for USPS tracking:

I think you're misinterpreting what they're saying. They're not talking about charging for normal tracking, instead they're offering a service to keep the tracking history for this package online for a longer period if you want to pay for that. Given the Sept date they mention it seems like the standard period to keep tracking records is 4 months, and if you want to keep the tracking for THIS PACKAGE longer than that you can pay extra money.

The only thing I can think of where one might want this is if there's some sort of dispute about delivery with finger pointing between the sender and receiver lasting months.
Ahh . . . thanks for explaining this. Considering how inexpensive this service is, I may just do the 10 year period.
I think that may be on a per tracking number basis, not very cheap when you consider that. Do you really want to look back on this specific shipment in 10 years.