Each region of the country has its own branch of the Russian Post - the regional administration of the federal postal service. All branches are geographically divided into ten macro-regions. The total number of post offices exceeds 40 thousand. There are two branches in Moscow and the Moscow region, united in the Moscow macro-region. Also on the territory of the region there is a logistics center "Vnukovo", which processes international mail, and an automated sorting center (ASC), located near Podolsk. In them, parcels and letters are distributed and sent to post offices in six regions - Tver, Tula, Vladimir, Ryazan, Kaluga, Moscow. If a client from the service area of the ASC sent a letter, for example, to Vladivostok, then first his letter will go to the Podolsk ASC, and then go to the main sorting center in the Far East. Where it will already be sorted to the final recipient. The Village went to an automatic sorting center in Podolsk (the largest in Russia and Eastern Europe) to see how letters and parcels were sorted there.
What happens at the sorting center
The automated center serves the six regions closest to it. This means that it sorts simple letters by post offices, registered letters and parcels - by district post offices. It also processes outgoing shipments from these regions for recipients from all over Russia. After the envelope has fallen into the mailbox, it is taken out, brought to the post office, where the letter is examined and the date of sending is set. Then the mail containers with letters are taken to the sorting center.
In total, 1,650 people work in it, about 350 employees go on a shift, the center can be compared with a large factory in terms of area - it occupies 29 thousand square meters. The sorting center operates around the clock, seven days a week and holidays. The conveyor only stops during maintenance hours. The equipment here is Italian.
A large proportion of the center's shipments in Podolsk are letters from various companies (including government organizations, such as fines from the traffic police) and catalogs. Parcels, parcels, EMS items, registered, valuable letters and first class items are also processed here. The sorting time is 21 hours, during this period the departure must go from the entrance to the departure. About 3 million mail items pass through the center every day. The hottest season is April-May, when all kinds of congratulations are sent from the state, and, of course, November-December - when everyone sends gifts and New Year's letters.
Photo
Yasya Vogelhardt
How to speed up the work
The company says that the delivery time for letters and parcels has been reduced. This was achieved thanks to two things - automation and logistics. In the first case, the construction of an automated sorting center in Vnukovo helped, where manual labor is minimized, and all parcels are sorted using special equipment. According to employees, now it takes no more than 22 hours from the moment you enter the international departure center to the departure to the country. Previously, such parcels could lie for days on end. In addition, the new Russian Post team revised the routes and removed unnecessary points from them. For example, if earlier a resident of Ryazan sent a letter to an addressee in his city, then the letter was first sent to Moscow for sorting and only then returned back. Now such transfers are sorted within the city.
How are letters sorted?
First, the operators scan the barcode and register the cargo. So in a special program, information appears about what type of mail and how much it has arrived. The data is also uploaded to the official website of the Russian Post, where the client, knowing the identifier (alphanumeric image for international parcels and digital for domestic parcels), can find out the location of his shipment. All containers are distributed among the workshops - letter mail, parcels and express shipments. In the express mail shop, the sorting process is partially automated: operators read the barcode of each with a hand-held scanner, find out the address and put it in a bag that goes to the desired city. According to the staff, this is because most express shipments are of irregular shape, so manual sorting is more acceptable.
Manual labor is also involved in sorting ordinary letters, but it is not much. There is also equipment for sorting large format letters. First, such letters are faceted - the operators put them in boxes so that they are located to each other on one side. Then the stacks are loaded onto the sorting machine: the items fly along the conveyor, the scanner reads the address from each and distributes them into cells in directions. This happens quite quickly - 12 letters per second are processed. If the address or index is written illegibly or contains some errors, the scanner sends a photo of this letter to the video encoding section. Employees of this department continuously manually drive in indexes from images of letters. To do this, you need to have a quick reaction - to have time to deal with the letter in no more than 30 seconds, since it is during this time that the sorting machine makes several circles. In addition, employees need to know the index range of the whole of Russia in order to deal with a mismatch between an index and an address, for example. Of course, in the event that the address is like “to the village of grandfather”, then the letter will be returned to the sender.
Then the letters are taken out of the cells, and the operator puts the items in blue branded boxes, sticks labels with the addresses of branches or post offices and puts the boxes on the conveyor belt. Here they are waiting for the last stages - forming into containers, loading and sending.
What happens to parcels
Parcels are distributed by six automated lines. The first one is intended for international shipments - customs-cleared shipments from Vnukovo arrive here for addressees residing in the entire ASC service area, except for Moscow. For Moscow, departures are sorted directly at the Vnukovo center. The outermost tape is designed for oversized cargo, and the rest - for standard parcels. All shipments are manually loaded onto a high-speed conveyor belt that moves at a speed of 2.2 meters per second. Boxes and parcels are automatically scanned and sorted into 320 outlets that correspond to different post offices. A mesh is installed under the conveyor belt - sometimes, due to the high speed of the conveyor and slippery packaging, the parcels slide down. Therefore, the operator regularly checks the grid and returns the parcels to the sorting tape.
In the place where containers with parcels are unloaded and loaded, there are Yantar installations. They check shipments for radioactive emissions and explosiveness. If a parcel seems suspicious to the operator, then he himself cannot open it, but must transfer it to the security service. In general, checking of domestic shipments usually takes place at post offices when submitting a shipment for delivery.
Very often, people on the site ask what this or that status of the package means. And if they ask, then you need to understand.
Postal status and order status for Aliexpress are two different things!
This article will talk about about mail statuses , also we have an article . These are different things. Order status is tracked in your . And reflects information about the parcel within the Aliexpress trading platform. And the status of the parcel is tracked in postal services (Russian Post, China Post, etc.). Do not confuse.
Not all orders can be tracked
Please note that not every package can be tracked while moving from the seller to you. This is only possible if she has a tracked track. But how do you find out before ordering?
In the case of Aliexpress - open, then click on the item Shipping
And after clicking, you will see a menu with information about delivery methods. The last column will display information about the availability of the track (Delivery Information).
If this field indicates Not available, then your order will not have a track when choosing this delivery, the parcel will not be tracked and you will not be able to find out the current postal status of the parcel.
How to track a parcel with Aliexpress
If this is your first time tracking a package and your package from Aliexpress, then read our article. If your parcel is not tracked at all, then read.
Please note that the article describes the most common statuses. In fact, there are many more of them, but other parcel statuses are much less common. And yet, for some private courier companies, especially in China, the same statuses can be indicated by different words. If you have some kind of status that is not described in this article - ask in the comments, we will try to figure it out. Be sure to indicate where you saw this status!
Parcel statuses in the country of departure (for example, in China)
While the parcel is in the country of departure, it can have the following statuses:
- Reception (Collection, Acceptance) - The parcel was handed over to the post office. It should be borne in mind that the parcel does not immediately begin to be tracked by the track number that the seller gave you. It takes some time to process the parcel entering the database. Usually the track begins to be tracked within 10 days.
- Opening (The parcel has arrived at the transit point) . Usually, next to this status, the postal code of the transit point is also written. There can be many such statuses. And the order is not always correct. Probably the operators of transit points do not fill in the data immediately. Therefore, one should not be surprised at the status of Opening after the Export.
- Arrival at MMPO (Dispatching, Processing) . In this status, the package is being prepared for export and shipment to the country of destination. For some transport companies in China, this is the last status that is tracked.
- Export (Departure from outward office of exchange, Total Export) - means that the parcel has passed all the necessary procedures and sent to the country of destination.
After the last status, it may take quite a long time until the parcel starts to be tracked in the country of destination. If the parcel was sent without an international track, then it may stop being tracked at all.
Parcel statuses in the country of destination (for example, the Russian Federation)
- Import (import) - the parcel has arrived in the country of destination. It is processed for transfer to customs.
- Reception at customs – transfer to customs for clearance.
- Customs clearance. Customs Release – the parcel has passed all the necessary customs clearance and is being prepared for release from MMPO
- Left the place of international exchange MMPO - the parcel left customs and was handed over to the post office for further dispatch.
- Left sorting center - the parcel is sorted and sent to its destination.
- Came to the place of delivery - the parcel arrived at the post office. In principle, you can already get it. Or wait for notification.
- Delivery to the addressee (Product Delivered) - the package has ALREADY been delivered to the recipient.
Please note that in the parcel tracking interface at the Russian Post, on import, the addressee's index is indicated. Sometimes, in case of an error or a fake track, it can be seen there that the parcel is not going to your post office. If the package has changed several statuses, and the index is still not correct, then you should start worrying.
Unpleasant package statuses
The package statuses described above are pretty standard. They mean that the package is on its way. Sometimes the package can get stuck on statuses, sometimes skip some, but, in most cases, everything is fine. However, there are statuses that clearly indicate problems:
- Return. Other circumstances - means that something is wrong with your package. And it is returned to the sender. What is wrong needs to be clarified. It is best to start with the Russian Post hotline 8-800-2005-888. After finding out the reasons and finding the guilty, you can think about what to do next.
- Return. return customs - similar to the previous paragraph. Usually means that the address is not legible.
- Unsuccessful attempt of delivery - usually accompanied by a clarification about the reasons for the failure. Inaccurate address, Incomplete address, Recipient dropped out, etc. In this situation, the main thing is to have time to run to the post office until the parcel storage time has expired - this is 30 days. Also check if the parcel arrived at the post office at all. Well, sometimes in the mail such statuses are put in general from a lantern. But it's worth it to control.
- Return. Shelf life expired - obviously, you forgot to receive the package on time and returned it.
- Sending Sending - the parcel arrived at the wrong post office and was redirected. That is, the parcel goes further. That is, this is not a problem, but you need to control the situation.
What do the letters at the end of the status mean (PEK, CAN, etc.)
These letters are often visible when tracking the status of a parcel on China Air Post. They mean the IATA designations of the airports in which the parcel was registered. Their designations can be seen on any service for purchasing air tickets (SkyScanner for example;)).
What does NULL status mean (NULL, PEK)
This status is visible when tracking the status of a parcel in China Post. These are just China Post internal statuses that they didn't translate into English. Therefore, where there should be a translation, it is not there, but NULL instead. If you still can’t bear to find out what kind of status it is, switch to the Chinese version of the service, copy the status in hieroglyphs and translate it with Google translator. True, this method does not always work. Sometimes in the Chinese version, some statuses simply do not exist.
NULL, PEK means that the parcel was at the Beijing airport. What she did there can be found in the Chinese version of China Air Post.
What does item arrived at OE in tne destination country mean
OE - office of exchange - MMPO, Place of International Postal Exchange. This is a normal status, which means that the package has arrived at customs and is undergoing customs clearance.
The track (package status) has stopped changing, the package is not tracked
Very often, restless buyers begin to worry when the status of a package suddenly stops changing. This often happens after export. It seems that quite recently the parcel was moving briskly around China, changing statuses almost every day, and suddenly, after some Export of international mail, Arrived to destination country and the like, the parcel stops moving ..
If you recognize your situation, then we analyzed this situation in detail in the article. In short, there are two options:
- If your track is international and is successfully tracked on the official website of your state mail (Russian Post, UkrPoshta, Belpochta) and more than 2-3 weeks have passed since the last status update, then your fears are not without foundation.
- If your track has never been tracked on the mail site. You recorded the status of the parcel in your Aliexpress personal account or some specialized track check site, or the track format in general is clearly different from the international one (the correct international one is something like this RR123456789CN). Then such a track often changes during export if the parcel is transferred to your state post office. That is, in your country, such a package travels under a different track (which you do not know, and, as a rule, you cannot find out). Well, the old track remains in the latest status. That is, there is nothing to worry about at all. This situation is the norm.
But be that as it may. Whether your package with Aliexpress is tracked or not, the main thing you should do is control the protection period and extend it if necessary or open a dispute.
Checking the seller on Aliexpress
Most problems with orders for Aliexpress can be avoided by carefully choosing a seller on Aliexpress BEFORE buying. There is nothing complicated in this and you can figure it out. But if time is precious and there is no time to understand, then use our service.
Finally
I have repeatedly written a personal opinion that when ordering goods from China, you need to be patient. No need to worry if the package does not change its status for three days, a week, two. This is a common occurrence. And on holidays, which are quite a few in China, everything stops in general. When ordering goods on Aliexpress, your parcels are protected. It is much more important for a successful purchase to spend more time choosing a lot and then control only the expiration date of protection. Than 20 times a day to monitor the movement of the parcel.
And use services and programs to control the movement of parcels. There aren't many different ones now.
P.S. from February 2018:
In the comments, you often ask what this or that status of the package means. Most often, the ambiguity of the meaning of the status is associated with a crooked translation of the status issued by the Chinese carrier. Often the current status depends on the previous movement of the parcel and it is possible to understand what your non-standard status means now only by understanding how the parcel moved earlier. Therefore, if you want to ask something about your package:
Write the track number of your parcel.
And we will ignore or delete comments like “What does the status of XXX mean?” Forgive me, but I'm tired of copy-pasting "Write a track, we'll see" into the void.
Sending and receiving letters, parcels, parcels is part of modern life. Every day, millions of people receive treasured boxes or envelopes. Russian Post provides many services, one of which is package tracking. What does it mean: "Left the sorting center"? What other statuses are there? if her number is not tracked? About this in the article.
Post office
The Russian one, which is the operator of the postal network and the backbone enterprise, is Russian Post. What does it mean: "Left the sorting center"? This status is often encountered by senders or recipients using mail services. If the client sends a parcel, letter or parcel, then the shipment is assigned a special track number. It can be used to track location.
"Russian Post" offers its customers various types of services (reception, processing, transportation, delivery, transfers), exchange of written correspondence, international postal items. In addition, the domestic company stores postal items, goods, cargo, distributes advertising, issues pensions, allowances, payments, accepts housing and communal payments, signs and distributes periodicals. "Mail of Russia" is also engaged in printing activities (creates and distributes postcards, stamps, envelopes, albums, catalogs), sells various goods wholesale and retail.
Many are interested in: does mail work well? What does it mean: "Left the sorting center"? This status may mean that the parcel or letter is already on its way and will soon arrive at its destination. Russian Post, despite the criticism of this organization, is working properly. Last year alone, she delivered more than 50% of orders from online stores. This is almost two hundred million parcels, one hundred and thirty million of which are international shipments. Most of the postal revenue comes from financial services, letter mail, parcels and EMS. The structure of the company includes the central administration, which consists of 22 divisions and 10 macro-regional branches.
Peculiarities
What does it mean: "Left the sorting center"? This is the question that is asked by the clients of the Russian Post, all who are recipients. Sorting center - automated. It sorts letters, parcels, parcels by branches and district post offices and processes outgoing items from all over the country. After the sender puts the envelope in the mailbox, it is taken out, sent to the post office, weighed and stamped with the date. The letters are then taken to a sorting center.
More than a thousand employees work at such an enterprise. In terms of area, the center occupies twenty-nine thousand square meters, and it is located in Podolsk (Moscow region). What does it mean: "Left the sorting center"? This status means that the letter or parcel is sent to the recipient's post office. It is determined by index. In addition to letters, parcels, parcels, EMS items, valuable, registered letters and items are processed in the center. Time sorting lasts twenty hours. Three million shipments pass through the center daily.
Statuses
Status "Left the sorting center" - what does it mean? Before the recipient receives the package, it will go through many different stages. For example, the status "sorting" means that the shipment is still in the sorting center. Parcels are stored in special export bags, which are opened, sorted and repacked. The status "Arrived at the sorting center" means that the package has been delivered for sorting and distribution. If the shipment "arrived at the international exchange", it is at customs, domestically, or waiting to be sent abroad. The designation "Left the place of international exchange" confirms the export operation.
What does it mean: "The parcel left the sorting center"? If the recipient, after entering the identifier number on the site, saw this status, then the parcel will soon arrive at the post office. The final designation "arrived at the place of delivery" indicates that the recipient should contact the post office and pick up the item. Do not forget to take your passport in this case.
Identifier
If the parcel left the sorting room, it means that it will soon reach the recipient. The tracking number of the shipment or the postal identifier comes to the rescue. This is a unique code of numbers that is assigned to all parcels. There is a domestic Russian track number and an international one. Usually it is indicated on the check, which is issued after the registration of the departure. If the parcel was sent after buying the item in the online store, the customer is sent an identifier with which to track the shipment.
To do this, go to the Russian Post website, enter a number consisting of fourteen digits divided into semantic parts, click "OK". After processing the information, the user will see information about the status of the shipment. If the status "Lviv. Left the sorting center" does not change for a long time, it means that the parcel is already in. If the information is not updated for a long time, the shipment may have been waiting for the recipient for a long time.
How much goes
What does it mean: "Processing. Left the sorting center"? If the recipient, after entering a unique identifier number, found such an inscription, this may mean that the parcel is still in the center or has recently been sent. In terms of time in Russia, parcels go for about two weeks, depending on the distance, weather conditions and other factors.
Letter
What does it mean: "The letter left the sorting center"? This status sometimes means that the information on the site has not been updated for a long time. In the center, operators receive incoming letters, read the barcode, and register. All data is uploaded to the official website of the Russian Post. You can track the path of the letter using the identifier. Containers with written correspondence, express mail and parcels are distributed between workshops. Sorting process but not completely. Employees scan each correspondence manually and register it.
Package
What does it mean: "The parcel left the sorting center"? This status often indicates that it has been sorted and shipped to its destination. In Podolsk, parcels are distributed through six automated lines. The first is used for international shipments, the second for small cargo, and the rest for regular parcels. Shipments are loaded manually, parcels are scanned and sorted automatically. In addition, they are checked for the presence of explosive substances.
LM239539750CN my order did not reach the designated place how can I find it
In my case, the path of the parcel from Moscow was as follows:
Moscow parcel shop ->
Moscow logistics shop ->
St. Petersburg parcel shop ->
St. Petersburg logistics shop ->
St. Petersburg Woop District ->
My post office.
You can track the path of the parcel in more detail in the picture (screenshot from the site).
If the parcel comes from afar, then there will be quite a lot of such sorting centers on the way of your parcel. And the fact that when tracking (on various sites) it will be written that a notification will come that the parcel has left the sorting center does not mean at all that your parcel will then arrive at the place of delivery (that is, your post office).
The information that the parcel has left the sort - th center means that the parcel is on the way again and, perhaps, on the way to your post office, where you can then pick up the parcel.
As a person who has recently had a lot of business directly with the Russian Post, I can say that the status of Left the sorting center means that the next point will be the branch where you can get it, that is, the one to which your address is attached. The only problem may be that even after arriving at the OPS, the parcel is not always immediately processed by the receiving operator, and in reality it may fall into the OPS for several more days before the operator sends a notification to the postman so that he can deliver it to your mailbox .
The sorting point is the usual points of the Russian post, where they change the transport on which the mail is transported. As soon as the parcel crosses the border, it goes through customs inspection, if it raises suspicions, it can even be opened. She then travels all the way to her final destination.
During its journey, a parcel can go a long way and visit several sorting centers. Thus, receiving a notice that the parcel has left the sorting centerquot ; is already pleasant in that it is not being processed and it has not been lost. The next point can be either the next center or the post office itself at the place of receipt.
The sorting center is a hub where all postal items of your region arrive. There they are sorted, loaded into the machines of the postal services and transported to the offices. If the track number indicates that the shipment left the sorting centerquot ;, this means that it is already on its way to the office. In the department, the parcel is accepted, entered into the computer, and only after that the parcel is ready for delivery.
Such a nuance: if a day has passed since departure parcels from sorting, but they didn’t bring you a notification, you can, armed with a track number, feel free to go to the post office and demand it. It's just that postmen don't always act quickly.
How to understand immediately sent to the department or at the place of delivery?
This is the same simple thing.
It depends on which sorting center she left. Believe me, she is not alone.
For example, she goes through two sorting centers to my place of residence, plus there is also sorting in my city.
Your parcel, after it has passed the sorting center, goes to customs, where it is very carefully examined for any violations. After that, she goes to her recipient's home, finally.
Usually when I track parcels from China, it (the parcel) is everywhere. But to generalize, it travels from one sorting point to another. Ultimately, it ends up in the sorting point of my city and from there it stays at the place of delivery. As I understand it, if they write in tracking that the parcel has left the sorting point, then it is on the way (that is, in some kind of vehicle carrying mail).
If I send the parcel to the village, then from my post office the parcel goes to the sorting point of the city, then it goes to the central sorting point of the region where the parcel was sent, from the central one it goes to the regional center, and only then to the village.
Parcel, letter or shipment left the sorting center - what does this mean and how long to expect to receive? How do MSCs operate and how is mail delivered?
I want to receive any parcel as soon as possible. And if the parcel is valuable, then the delay in delivery naturally causes excitement. And if everything is more or less clear with transportation, then sorting in the forwarding centers raises questions for everyone.
What does it mean?
The status when tracking the parcel "Left the sorting center" means that the box was scanned by the operator (or automatically) and placed on the trolley (box, basket, conveyor). In the near future, the mail container should be loaded onto a truck and taken to the station, airport or post office, if it is near the ASC.
Automated sorting shops were built in Russia to speed up the processing of deliveries. They played their role - before everything was distributed manually, workers had to write data into a log for a long time, so the parcels went for several months, and in the 90s, it happened for half a year. Today, part of the work is automated, computers, scanners and even robots have appeared, so the time has been reduced, although by modern standards they continue to be large.
How much to wait?
However, in practice this may be true only if the departure is between major cities. For example, Rostov-on-Don, Ufa, Yekaterinburg and other cities when departing for Moscow are usually served very quickly, their sorting centers are equipped with conveyors, electronic barcode scanners and automatic sorters. Millions of correspondence and letters fly through these systems with little or no human intervention.
But in small towns and district centers, sorting can still be done manually, so after the status "left the sorting center" appears, it may take several weeks before receipt. Again, the Russian Post has failures and delays in sending, it is no coincidence that there are so many jokes on the Internet regarding this structure.
In addition, the notification that your parcel has left the sorting center means only the passage of the final registrar. But in reality, parcels and bundles of letters can wait for several days to be loaded on board the aircraft at the gates of this same MSC, for example, if there is bad weather, or there is a flight delay. Approximately the same can be said about railway mail.
Russia is a large country, there can be a lot of delay factors, and besides, people in the departments don’t really want to try for their penny salaries. And it's hard to blame them.
When to go to the post office if you received the status Left the sorting center? Wait until the next status “Arrived at the place of delivery” appears - this means that the package is already in place. But even here, in practice, delays are possible, for example, the correspondence that has arrived is piled up in a warehouse, and they will be issued only after internal sorting, the speed of which depends directly on the quickness of the aunts working in the department. So only a notification received or a call from the post office can guarantee the receipt of the parcel.
