"Delivery progress enquiry", or "delivery progress inquiry" in the US spelling, is a line people search after opening the tracking for an order from China, because it sits where a status should be and appears in no carrier's list of statuses. This page explains what the line is, the two places it appears, what the real statuses around it mean, what it means when the page says "no information" or "no record found", how long to wait and what to do. The same explanation is in Portuguese in delivery progress enquiry tradução and in Spanish in delivery progress enquiry: qué significa.
Short answer: "Delivery progress enquiry" is not a parcel status; it is an enquiry. It appears in two places. On China Post, EMS and the trackers that aggregate their data, it is the English heading of the tracking-result page, the screen where you enter the number and see the list of events. On 4PX and Cainiao feeds, it is an automatic line written when the system queries the destination country's carrier about the parcel's progress. In neither case has the parcel stopped. "Enquiry" is the British spelling and "inquiry" the American one; they mean the same thing. The statuses that matter are the lines with a place and a date: "posting", "dispatching", "departure from outward office of exchange", "arrival at inward office of exchange", "handed over to local carrier", "out for delivery", "delivered". If the page shows "no information", the number has not been scanned yet, which is normal in the first days, or it was typed wrong.
What the line is
The literal reading settles it: "delivery" is the delivery, "progress" its progress, "enquiry" a query. As a page heading, the line tells you that what follows is the delivery progress for the number you entered. As a feed line on 4PX and Cainiao, it records that the system asked the local carrier for an update; our Portuguese glossary describes it as the system "consulting the local carrier on progress; the parcel has not stopped." We could not open China Post's and EMS's own tracking pages to confirm the exact wording of the heading (the pages did not render or redirected), and we say so here rather than assume it.
The statuses around it
On China Post and EMS parcels the vocabulary is postal, inherited from the Universal Postal Union:
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Posting / collection | The post office has received the parcel from the seller | Nothing |
| Opening | The mail bag containing your parcel was opened for sorting; your parcel itself is not opened | Nothing |
| Dispatching | The parcel left one office for the export port | Nothing |
| Departure from outward office of exchange | Export processing is complete and the parcel is leaving China | Nothing; expect one to three weeks of silence |
| Arrival at inward office of exchange | The parcel has arrived in your country | Nothing; customs and the local carrier come next |
| Handed over to customs / released from customs | The border stage in your country | Watch for a payment request |
| Handed over to local carrier | Your country's carrier has it, often under a new number | Track on the carrier's site |
| Out for delivery | On the vehicle for delivery today | Be reachable |
| Delivered | Done | Check who signed if you do not have it |
The full China Post sequence is in China Post tracking statuses; Cainiao's, which carries most AliExpress orders, in Cainiao tracking statuses; and 4PX's in 4PX tracking statuses.
What "no information", "no record found" or "not found" means
The page opened and the heading appeared, but there are no events under it. Three causes, most common first:
- The number has not been registered yet. The seller created the label, but the carrier has not scanned the parcel. Normal in the first days after shipping.
- The number is mistyped or belongs to another carrier. International postal numbers have 13 characters, two letters, nine digits and two letters (for example "LB123456789CN"); a number in another format belongs to another system.
- The tracker you used does not cover that service. The number exists, but that site does not have the data; the carrier that issued the number does.
If the page still shows nothing after a week, the problem is on the seller's side, and the seller is the one to ask, with the number.
How long to wait
By our China Post guide's reading, after "departure from outward office of exchange" the silence usually lasts one to three weeks until "arrival at inward office of exchange"; customs and the local delivery then follow the local carrier's timing. No carrier publishes a per-stage time, and the estimated delivery date on the order is the number to watch.
What to do
- Check the number and look it up on the site of the carrier that issued it, not only on an aggregator.
- "No information" for less than a week. Wait; the parcel has not been scanned yet.
- Silence after the departure from China. Normal for one to three weeks.
- A customs payment request. Pay only through the local carrier's own channel.
- The estimated date passes, or more than a week with no event after arrival in your country. Contact the seller through the marketplace, with the number.
- "Delivered" and nothing received. Check neighbours and the building and report the same day; the checklist is in package says delivered but not received.
For merchants
A tracking page headed "delivery progress enquiry" over a list of postal events is what a shopper sees on a cross-border order shipped through the Chinese postal networks, and the heading itself generates tickets because it reads like a status nobody explains. A brand shipping on these networks fixes it by showing its own tracking page, with milestones instead of postal vocabulary ("left China", "arrived in your country", "in customs", "with your local carrier") and the expected date beside each. Pango normalises the statuses of every connected carrier into one milestone set in the customer's language, stitches the international and the last-mile numbers on one order record, and sends the cross-border handover and delay messages automatically. If this vocabulary is generating tickets, the options to compare are in carrier management software.
The bottom line
"Delivery progress enquiry" is a query, not a stage: the name of the results screen, or the system asking the local carrier for news. Read the events under it, expect the normal silence after the parcel leaves China, and contact the seller only when the estimated date passes or the page stays empty for a week.
