A parcel delivery time log: order, dispatch, tracking and door timestamps on one row, with the carrier's scan and the observed arrival kept apart

Goal

Keep, per parcel, the times at which the order was placed, dispatched, handed over and received, from the sources that recorded them, so that the intervals between them can be compared across shops, carriers and months without relying on a memory of "about a week".

Prerequisites

The order confirmation and dispatch e-mails, the carrier's tracking page, and a household note of when the parcel was actually in hand. Timestamps are written in the Internet Date/Time Format of RFC 3339 (for example 2026-09-16T14:05:00+02:00), because shop, carrier and household may be in different time zones and the offset makes subtraction unambiguous; where a source shows only a date, the row records the date and marks the time as unknown rather than inventing one.

Steps

1. Header: the delivery place options (house door, letterbox, parcel locker, neighbour), the household's time zone, and a vocabulary for outcomes: handed over, left at door, left with neighbour, locker, attempt without delivery, returned.
2. Per parcel: an identifier (order number), the shop, the shop's dispatch promise as written ("ships in 1–2 days"), the carrier and service name as shown on the tracking page, whether a tracking number existed, and the dispatch country if shown.
3. Timestamps, each with its source named: order placed (the confirmation e-mail's header time), dispatch notice, first carrier scan, "out for delivery" scan if any, the carrier's "delivered" scan, and the observed arrival: the time a household member first saw or held the parcel, written at that moment.
4. Record each delivery attempt as its own row with its outcome from the vocabulary and the delivery place actually used.
5. Derive the intervals (order to dispatch, dispatch to first scan, first scan to delivered scan, delivered scan to observed arrival) in separate columns by subtraction; leave an interval blank when either end is unknown.
6. Never fill a timestamp from memory; if the arrival was not written at the moment, record "same day, time not recorded".

Expected result

A per-parcel table in which each interval belongs to one stage and one source, the gap between the carrier's delivered scan and the observed arrival is a column of its own, and attempts and outcomes can be counted per carrier and delivery place.

Limits and test basis

Proposed protocol; no delivery time, carrier difference or reliability is claimed, and no carrier or shop is recommended. Tracking events are the carrier's records and may be batched or entered late; the log stores them as shown. The observed arrival depends on someone being present; a parcel found in the morning has an unknown arrival time and is recorded as such. Consumer rights, refunds and complaints are outside the log's scope.