I regularly buy stuff on-line and use a freight forwarder in the US to send the package to me in Guatemala. All too often I get a message that an invoice is needed, go to the forwarder web page and is says it was from “shipping center” or something equally useless. While I try to keep track of tracking numbers that doesn’t always happen — or something might be shipped from China with one tracking number and then forwarded with a different one.

Just to offer an example, today I got informed that a 19 lb. package was received from “FULLFILLMENT OPERATION”. No clue and the tracking number wasn’t in my list. The tracking number was just a bunch of digits so I didn’t even know who the shipping company was. Enter 17Track at https://www.17track.net/en

17Track is one of an assortment of companies that keep track of tracking numbers from a host of shipping companies. I entered the tracking number and found out it was shipped by FedEx and came from Anaheim, California. A clue.

It turned out this was an item I bought on Amazon. Amazon had told me it had shipped but they didn’t have the tracking number. While I attempted to get it, I never did. So 17Track bailed me out.