That depends where you are, though the pattern stays consistent even when the name doesn’t. Cross-border operators like JCEX carry parcels out of China and through import clearance, then hand them to a delivery company in the destination country — a national post in many markets, a domestic courier in others, particularly across Southeast Asia where private networks dominate. The handover happens after clearance rather than at the border, so the local name appears in your scans a little later than you might expect. Reading your tracking history is the reliable way to know who has it: once scan locations start describing places near you, you’re looking at the local carrier’s record rather than the international one.

Several days at clearance is routine rather than a red flag. Import processing works through parcels in batches, and the queue is the real cost — yours is waiting its turn rather than being examined. A hold becomes meaningful when it’s waiting on something: an unpaid charge, a missing document, or details the authorities need from you. Those arrive as a message rather than as silence, so check your email, texts and any messages from the seller before assuming the worst. If a couple of weeks pass with no change and no request, ask the seller to raise it — they booked the shipment and can get an answer where a receiver often can’t. Peak seasons stretch clearance noticeably.

Supply it promptly, but verify where the request came from first. Several countries genuinely require the receiver’s tax or identity number for import clearance, and without it a parcel simply sits. The legitimate route is through the carrier’s own site or through the seller, so a request arriving by text with a link deserves suspicion until you’ve confirmed it independently. Normal things to be asked for: an identity or tax number where your country requires one, a corrected address, or a working phone number. Not normal: card details, a payment to “release” the parcel through an unfamiliar link, or your account passwords. Once you’ve confirmed the request is genuine, answering the same day is what keeps the parcel moving.

The local carrier, since by that point they’re the ones holding your parcel. A failed attempt usually generates a card, a text or an email explaining what happens next — another attempt, a collection point, or a wait at their depot — and their own service is where you rearrange it. Speed matters here, because a parcel that fails repeatedly gets returned, and an international return effectively ends the order. If you can’t work out which company made the attempt, the scan locations will point to it, or the local number will identify it once you have one. Bring in the seller only if the parcel goes back or disappears, since that’s when refunding or resending becomes the question.

Whichever name appears on your most recent scans — and identifying it changes what you can do. Once a local company holds your parcel, their tools open up to you: their app or site for a redelivery, a safe place, a collection point, plus their rules on how many attempts they make and how long they hold things. That’s worth five minutes of your time, because most missed-delivery problems get solved by the local carrier rather than by anyone upstream. If the scans don’t name a company clearly, the arrival city usually gives it away, and adding the local number here identifies it automatically. Until the handover happens, there’s simply nobody local to contact yet.

Use the new one for anything happening now, and keep the old one for the record. The original covers the Chinese and international portion of the trip and stops updating at the handover, which looks like a failure but is really just the end of its usefulness. The local number replacing it is what the delivering carrier’s systems recognise, so it’s the one that works for redelivery, collection or a safe place instruction. Together the two show the whole journey and, more importantly, where the parcel was last confirmed if anything goes wrong. Add both here and you won’t have to think about which is which again.

That’s the job this page does. Paste in whatever number you’re holding and we’ll recognise the format automatically — across more than 1,000 carriers — then show you what’s happening without you working out whose website to visit. When a second number appears at the handover, add that too and the pair join into one continuous record, so the Chinese leg and the local delivery read as a single journey. Switch alerts on and you’ll be told when the local carrier picks it up, which is usually the moment things start moving quickly again.

You may also want to explore tracking for these other destinations:

• Your China orders, all in one place

• Waiting on something from United States?

• Keep an eye on Great Britain deliveries

• Tracking made easy for Australia

• See deliveries to and from Germany

• Where's your Singapore parcel?

These carrier pages are worth a look too:

• Got a China Post number? Start here

• Check your China EMS shipment

• Yun Express updates in one place

• Waiting on 4PX? Track it here

• Track your CNE Express parcels

• Following a Yanwen delivery?