UK Royal Mail Click and Drop Tracking Issues

[PaivatarYarn]

I have been experiencing problems with Royal Mail Click and Drop tracking. I ship all of my items on time but there have been several occasions over the past few weeks where the tracking number has not recorded properly to Etsy. The items were shipped. In some cases buyers already left a review. But Etsy doesn't recognize the item as shipped without the tracking number.  Therefore I have lost my Star Seller status due to shipping.. and it keeps dropping as this issue is not resolved.

I wrote to Royal Mail and received this response

We have identified an issue effecting some of our customers, where Click & Drop would not mark the item as Despatched, but items would progress through without an issue, the one you have provided examples for below. It has been reported to our developers already, and the issue is currently under investigation and unfortunately we have not been given an estimated time of the fix release at the moment.

Please be assured, this is an issue with Click & Drop only, and will not affect any delivery.

On some listings, I am able to go back in and add a tracking number where it was missed. On others I can't. I wrote to Etsy support but haven't heard back yet.

I don't wish to use Etsy shipping labels because I also ship items through other platforms.

[CraftyCornishMaids]

Royal mail is having problems with tracking, and updating

Even Amazon is getting late updates

It's not an etsy issue, it's a royal mail issue,
It's been like this ever since the Royal mail had a week meltdown on tracking, it hasn't worked properly ever since

you have 3 days to update/add the tracking number, after marking as dispatched,
BUT, if you change, or add the tracking number, etsy uses the date you change/add it, as the NEW shipping date, and if that was after your processing times, you will be dinged for star seller anyway

[EnFEngraving]

My suspicion is the royal mail had a hack which caused current issues. They went through a week where you couldn't track anything. Infact do anything on the website at all without fulfilling a captcha thing. In the process of making things more secure other things have got broken. Such is the way with software. Especially when 3rd parties are intertwined with it. 

[TonsOfPaper · Accepted solution]

Hello @PaivatarYarn,

As of the moment, we're experiencing intermittent issues with tracking for a UK shipping provider. Because of this, some UK tracking events aren’t currently visible on Etsy’s end. Although tracking events aren’t currently shown on Etsy, as long as a valid tracking number is provided, you’ll still be eligible to meet the tracking criteria for Star Seller. 

If you're using a third party Integration to add the tracking number on your order, you may want to manually add the tracking number to be sure that they will be input correctly. 

Thank you very much!