What To Do If Amazon’s Tracking Status Is “Delivered,” But The Parcel Is Missing

Sometimes things go wrong and simple things get quite confusing. One such situation is when Amazon says your package has been delivered, but you know it hasn’t been. What do you do next?

The Tracking Status Is “Delivered”

This means that the package should be in the usual spot, where your delivery person normally leaves your packages. This could be your building’s mailroom, in at your front door, on your stoop, in you package box, or any number of other places.

Amazon will usually provide some sort of proof of delivery — usually an image — that you can look at on Amazon.com in order to confirm the delivery happened as the driver described.

The “Delivered” status means that the package should be at its final destination, not on the way, in the truck, or even in the driver’s hands on its way to your door.

What Happened?

There are a few reasons why a package that doesn’t seem to have been delivered could be marked as such.

One popular scenario that happens is larger cities is that some third-party shippers (partners that work with Amazon on last-mile shipping) will mark packages as being delivered even though they haven’t been delivered yet. The shippers do this in order to fulfill their obligations to their Amazon contract when they are overwhelmed with shipments. In this case the package will normally be delivered late in the evening or the next day, but it can still create lots of confusion.

What To Do About A Missing Package That Says “Delivered”

If your package is not where it should be the you have to use Amazon’s Find a Missing Package instructions. You can use this to report a package that isn’t where it’s supposed to be.

The first thing Amazon says to do is to contact the shipper using the contact phone numbers here. Using these numbers you can call USPS, DHL, or other shippers order to get better information about the whereabouts of your package.

If the carrier is no help and the carrier’s tracking system also shows the package as being delivered then Amazon says to follow these instructions:

  • Confirm the shipping address is what you believe it to be
  • Search around the shipping location for a door tag or similar proof that a delivery attempt was made but the item wasn’t left
  • Search further for the package — Is it behind a garbage can? Perhaps it’s inside your garage? A substitute driver may have put it in a place where you didn’t expect.
  • Look inside your mailbox. If the item was transferred to USPS it could have been put there.
  • Check with roommates and neighbors to see if someone else accepted the package. The Amazon delivery note should say something about who took the package or how the drop off was made. For example: “Package was signed for by doorman,” or “Package was left with Robert.”

Don’t worry about rushing to contact Amazon is a package is missing. You will have up to 30 days after the expected delivery date to contact Amazon and report the package as being missing.

Try To Contact The Seller

Another thing you can do to try to fix the situation is contact the Third-Party Seller (the Amazon Marketplace seller) who sold you the item and arranged for its delivery.

This is easy to do:

  • Go to your Amazon Orders page
  • Select the Order that contains the missing item
  • Pick “Problem With Order”
  • Choose the appropriate topic, in this case, “Package Didn’t Arrive”
  • Contact the seller and report the issue

This should get you more information and it’s possible the seller will remedy the situation if they were somehow at fault.

If All Else Fails…

If all else fails then the best thing to do it so open up the Amazon app, go to the account page, then to Support, and then either setup a chat or phone call. Once you get in touch with the representative then go ahead and tell them what happened — perhaps your package was stolen or was never delivered in the first place — and they will work with you to come to an equitable solution.