Oh my goodness this drives me insane. Ebay sucks for this. Just tell me the info! I shouldn't need to log in.
I do my best to avoid merchants who use shippit because of this. At least shippit tells me the actual carrier and the carrier tracking number so I can do what I need to do. Even if the third party shippit tracking is up to date I still don't want to use shippit's tracking page anyway.
I had to reach out to (deeply patronising!) customer service for Sendle because they don't show any carrier information at all on their tracking page. None. I'm in Australia, and they are an Australian company so it's not like they're unfamiliar with the way things work here. Sendle tracking page never has any tracking information, and if I'm lucky I'll get a 'your parcel has been picked up from the sender!' email a week after the thing has been delivered. It's so frustrating! It's so needless; sendle already got their slice of the financial pie, and as far as I can see, their value proposition isn't going to be negatively impacted by simply choosing not to obfuscate the carrier info, so just give me the information! I think it would make the value prop better; if I am not going to be home when a parcel delivery is scheduled (which again has never been visible on anything I've received via sendle), being able to contact and coordinate with the carrier prior to a failed delivery can be necessary. If I knew what day parcels were coming and by which carrier so I can make sure I'm home at the time they typically show up. Also maybe don't be rude when customers ask for basic information that should already be provided by default! You're supposed to be a shipping company! Useless.
I just don't understand the motives of making tracking hard or impossible (thanks, sendle). Ebay making you log in means you might just buy more stuff while you're here, but for third party shipping companies whose customers are businesses trying to ship things I don't understand the value of (developing, hosting, integrating with carrier tracking, etc.) their tracking pages at all, obfuscating the carrier info or not. Is it just because the shippit tracking page looks nicer than most carrier tracking? I'm probs missing something obvious? If anyone has any insight, I would genuinely love to understand.