Amazon’s Real-Time Map Tracking Package Delivery App Available to All US Customers

Amazon Map Tracker, a feature the company quietly introduced last month, has started expanding to more users in the US, as noted by Android Police and confirmed by CNET.

The feature gives you a real-time map of your Amazon package delivery as it’s in transit, letting you watch a dot on the screen similar to monitoring an incoming Uber or Lyft driver. It was given a soft launch last year.

The feature is great for anyone who obsesses over the exact moment an Amazon delivery is slated to arrive.

It’s also handy because it allows you to pop out for an errand by showing how many stops or deliveries the driver will make before reaching you.

“The Amazon Map Tracking feature is another delivery innovation we are working on to improve convenience for our customers and provide them greater visibility into their deliveries,” Amazon spokeswoman Alana Broadbent told CNET.

“The Amazon Map Tracking feature is another delivery innovation we are working on to improve convenience for our customers and provide them greater visibility into their deliveries.”

Caution: FedEx, UPS, and USPS packages aren't eligible, only deliveries handled by Amazon logistics will get the live tracking.

Business Insider says you'll get access to live tracking when your driver only has fewer than 10 stops left before reaching your location.

It shows you their estimated time of arrival and how many deliveries they have left before they arrive.

Since you can see the driver's every movement, it raises concerns about security and privacy - someone could order an item just to see which houses near them have gotten packages they could steal off porches.

If you're out of the house and want to make sure you're there to receive your package or that the driver truly made a stop at your place, it sounds like a very useful tool

Hey @amazon thanks for the same day delivery for insanely inexpensive cost! Plus the feature where it shows where the Amazon delivery person is on a map and how many parcels they’re delivering before yours is a godsend and so nice to have in the Bay Area! You rock! ❤️�� pic.twitter.com/j5nUxk3QuV

— J. Austyn Belanger (@JRyanNYC) February 25, 2018

In other news, Amazon is banning shoppers who return items too often. As reported by CNET, Amazon's flexible return policy may not be as risk-free as you think.

The company bans shoppers for violations, which include returning items too often, according to The Wall Street Journal. Some users aren't told what they did wrong.

Amazon boasts free and easy returns for many of its items, which has pushed many brick-and-mortar stores to offer the same policies as they struggle to compete with the e-commerce giant. But it turns out Amazon's return policies may come at a price.

RetailWire reported that, according to the National Retail Federation, 11 percent of sales are returned, and 11 percent of those are fraudulent. If I’m doing my math correctly, that means that a little over 1 percent of customers are making excessive or fraudulent returns.

Forbes reports that there is a cost to these fraudulent returns. Any company that sells anything knows that returns, legitimate or not, impact the bottom line. The price of whatever is sold is determined by many factors such as the cost to manufacture, the cost of shipping, the cost of employees and much more – including the cost of returns. Mitigating the fraudulent returns can help the bottom line. Companies that have a low-price business model can keep prices low if they can eliminate fraud.

What Amazon has done is interesting. Rather than make a blanket, across-the-board decision with a more stringent return policy, it has opted to go after the abusers.

In other words, it is not going to punish all of its customers for the sins of a very few.

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