Tracking

I ordered something from Amazon yesterday. Its being delivered today. I don't want to end up trapped in all day waiting... but luckily, Amazon provide delivery tracking information on their website. And looking at this, it seems my delivery is imminent...





I mean, it must be, right? Because it's already travelled quite a long way from A to B and now it's got the even longer journey to make from B to D... but it's already got as far as C and that's, what, 85% of the way there? 


As it goes, I know the depot's only a couple of miles away so they can't be more than 5 minutes away according to this. I'll stay in. I'll wait.

Well I would do if I hadn't seen this before. It looks like this all day. Sometimes they deliver at 9 in the morning. Sometimes at 9 at night. It doesn't matter when it's turning up. The minute it leaves the depot it appears as "almost there" and it remains "almost there" until it's, um, there. (And sometimes, they run out of time and don't deliver to us at all, actually.)

So what's the point of the graphic? In what sense is my delivery being tracked? Once it's left the depot, nobody is able to track its progress. So wouldn't this be a bit more honest? A bit more binary?




Isn't that a bit less suggestive of progress that hasn't actually been made?

I know this isn't a big issue. I know that if you're looking for a stick to beat Amazon with there are far bigger sticks available. But it seems like a counter-productive trick to try and pull. Because it's so obviously a trick. And tricks are dishonest things to try and get away with. When a business transparently tries to flim-flam its customers, don't they just end up with customers who trust them a little less? Aren't they just sowing seeds of distrust? 

"Amazon? Oh yeah... they're the guys that think I'll fall for the progress-bar trick... you want to watch them... they're shifty buggers..."