Help & FAQ

• Creating an account
• Managing your profile
• Booking a shipment
• Add-ons (insurance, signature, photo, fragile)
• Proof of delivery — what you can see
• Editing or cancelling before drop-off
• Why the price can change at drop-off
• What happens if I don't drop off
• Tracking a shipment
• Live tracking — follow the vehicle itself
• SMS & email notifications
• What does my shipment number look like?
• What do the status labels mean?
• What's the difference between Standard, Express, Overnight…?
• How is pricing calculated?
• How do I contact support?

You don't need an account to track a shipment — public tracking works for anyone with a shipment number. But signing up gives you:

• One-click booking from saved sender details
• A "My Shipments" dashboard showing every parcel you've ever sent or received
• Email and SMS notifications when your parcel status changes — sent to the phone and email on your profile

To sign up: click Sign up at the top right, enter your name + email + phone + password. We send a confirmation link to your email — click it to activate. Then sign in.

Forgot your password? On the sign-in page, click "Forgot password?" — we'll email you a reset link valid for one hour.

Open Profile from the top nav. Four sections:

• Personal details — first name, last name, phone. These auto-fill as the sender on every new booking. Updating them does NOT change the contact info on shipments you've already booked (those are snapshots).
• Default sender address — optional. If you set one, it pre-fills when booking. You can still override per shipment.
• Account email — read-only for now. Email change requires re-verification and is contact-support-only at the moment.
• Change password — enter your current password + a new one (min 10 chars). Your session stays signed in.

Sign in to your account, then click Book a Shipment. The form walks you through three things:

1. Route & recipient. Pick the origin office (where you'll drop off the parcel) and the destination office. Pick a service tier (Standard / Express / Overnight / etc. — see Services). Fill in the recipient's name and contact details.
2. Parcel details. Add each parcel one at a time — give it a short description, dimensions (L × W × H in cm), and weight in kg. Estimated cost recalculates as you add parcels. Sending letters or documents? Tap a Quick pick chip (DL, C6, C5 or C4) to instantly fill in the standard envelope size and weight — then tweak if needed.
3. Confirm. Review the booking summary on the right. Click "Confirm booking". You get a shipment number like SHP-20260603-XXXXXXXX and a tracking link.

After confirming: drop the parcel at the origin office during business hours, pay at the counter, and the staff will check it in. You and the recipient both get email status updates as the parcel moves.

The booking is held in a cart for 24 hours — if you log out before confirming, you'll find it waiting next time you sign in.

While the shipment status is still Created (you haven't dropped the parcel off yet), you can:

• Edit the route, service, recipient details, or parcels (add, remove, change dimensions and weight).
• Cancel the booking entirely.

Go to My Shipments, open the shipment, and use the Edit or Cancel booking button at the top right.

Editing keeps the same shipment number, so any tracking link you've already shared still works. Editing the route or service re-prices the booking automatically.

Cancelling burns the shipment number — once cancelled, you cannot reuse it. Book a fresh shipment if you still want to send the parcel.

After drop-off you can no longer edit or cancel yourself — contact the office that received the parcel.

The price you see when booking is based on the dimensions and weight you enter. The actual price is calculated at the counter when staff weigh and measure the parcel.

• If the actual measurements match what you declared, the price doesn't change.
• If the parcel is heavier or larger, the final price goes up — pay the difference at the counter.
• If it's lighter or smaller, the final price goes down — the counter refunds or credits the difference.

You'll get an email showing the original quote and the final total. Pricing is always shown including VAT.

When you book online, the price is based on the size and weight you enter. To keep things fair, we measure a share of online parcels at our counter. If a parcel turns out to be bigger or heavier than declared:

• Slightly off (within 10%) — no extra charge. We'll send a note asking you to declare accurately next time.
• More than 10% over — we add the price difference to what you owe on that parcel, and we'll email and text you. You pay it at the counter or on delivery, just like any other charge.

While a difference is unpaid, new bookings are paused until it's cleared — either paid, or resolved through a dispute.

Think it's wrong? Open the parcel from My Shipments and use dispute it to tell us why. We keep a photo and the scale/tape reading for every measurement, so our team can review the evidence and either uphold the charge or waive it. Declaring your parcel's real size and weight keeps your account in good standing — and trusted senders get measured far less often.

If you booked a shipment online and never drop the parcel off, the booking won't sit there forever.

• Day 10: you get an email reminder — you have 4 days left to drop off.
• Day 14: the booking is auto-cancelled and the shipment number is burned.

If you know in advance that you can't make it, cancel from My Shipments — that's cleaner than letting it lapse.

Go to the Track Shipment page and enter the shipment number you received when the parcel was booked. Tracking is public — you don't need to log in.

Each parcel inside a shipment has its own barcode. The tracking page shows the full history per parcel: where it was dropped off, every hub it passed through, and when it was delivered.

Want to watch the vehicle itself move? That's the paid live tracking add-on.

On some routes you can pay a small add-on at booking to follow the vehicle carrying your parcel — not just the counter scans. It covers your whole shipment (all parcels travel together) and comes two ways:

• 💻 Live on your account — a live progress bar with distance-to-go and an arrival estimate, on your shipment page and the public tracking page.
• 📱 SMS updates — periodic texts with how far the vehicle still has to go and the arrival estimate, plus the live view above.

When you'll see it: the option appears in the booking steps only when the operator on your route has GPS-tracked vehicles and offers it there. No option shown = not available on that route (and you're never charged for it).

What it costs: the price is worked out from the route distance and shown before you confirm — a longer trip means more position updates, so a slightly higher fee.

When it starts and stops: updates begin the moment your parcel is scanned onto the vehicle at dispatch and stop automatically when it's checked in at the destination. Between booking and dispatch the page simply says tracking is waiting for departure.

Changing your plans: if you drop the parcel at a different outlet or change the route, the fee is re-worked for the new route — or removed and taken off your bill if the new route doesn't offer tracking. A teller can also remove the add-on at the counter if you ask (or if the drop-off outlet can't support it); you keep the booking, minus that fee.

Distances and arrival times use the straight-line distance to the destination — treat them as estimates, not road navigation.

There's a search box at the top of every page once you're signed in. Type any of these and press Search:

• Shipment number (e.g. SHP-20260613-…)
• Recipient name
• Recipient phone number
• Destination town

Results open in your My Shipments list, in the same place you'd normally see them. Tap View on any result to open that shipment's full detail page.

As your parcel moves through its journey, we send you an email and an SMS at the key milestones — whichever you check first, you'll know.

SMS goes to the phone number on your Profile. Keep it up to date — we don't ask for confirmation, the message goes wherever the profile says. Recipients also get SMS at the destination phone you entered when booking.

Milestones that can trigger an SMS (the exact set is tuned by the platform — cancellation notices and drop-off deadline warnings always come through):

• Booking confirmed — your shipment number and where to bring the parcel
• Received at origin counter — we have your parcel; it's not on the road yet
• Shipped — parcel has left origin and is on the way to destination
• Final price adjustment (when the counter weighs differently than you declared)
• Arrived at destination — ready for pickup at the destination office
• Out for delivery (when door-to-door is included)
• Delivered to recipient
• Auto-cancel warning if you haven't dropped off after 10 days
• Routing correction in progress — if your parcel ever lands at the wrong sorting facility, we'll let you know we're putting it right (no action needed from you)
• Self-pickup hold placed / cleared — when you (the sender) flag a shipment for self-pickup, the recipient gets an SMS so they know to collect at the counter instead of waiting for delivery

📱 Paid live-tracking texts are separate: if you bought the SMS live tracking add-on, the distance-to-go texts while the vehicle is moving arrive on top of the status messages above — they're a product you paid for, so they keep coming even if you switch status SMS off.

Self-pickup hold — sometimes the recipient would rather come collect at the counter than wait for the delivery rider. The option appears once you've dropped your parcel at the origin office — there's nothing to hold while it's still with you. Open the shipment from My Shipments after drop-off and use the "🚶 Prefer to pick it up yourself?" public-card. You'll see the full route your parcel is travelling — origin, every intermediate hub, and final destination:

• 📍 Where the parcel is now — highlighted in blue with the "PARCEL IS HERE" tag, and selected by default. This is usually what you want.
• 🟢 Ahead on route — the parcel will reach this office in due course; hold takes effect when it arrives.
• ⚪ Already passed — greyed out and locked. We can't hold a parcel at an office it's no longer at. If a parcel ever bounces back to a previous office, that office becomes "current" again and the hold option re-opens.
• Off the planned route — if a routing correction temporarily put the parcel at an unplanned office, that office is added to the list with the 📍 tag so you can still hold there.

Change your mind later? Just clear the hold and we'll put the parcel back on the normal route.

About refunds: placing a hold doesn't reduce or refund your shipping fee. Transit resources have already been allocated for the parcel, so we can't credit you for changing the pickup arrangement. The hold is a free convenience — not a service downgrade.

SMS is best-effort. If your phone is off or the network drops, the SMS won't be retried automatically — but the email still goes through, and tracking on the public page is always up to date.

Shipment numbers follow the format SHP-YYYYMMDD-XXXXXXXX — for example SHP-20260602-A1B2C3D4. The middle section is the date the shipment was created. The trailing 8 characters are a random unique identifier.

Each parcel barcode within a shipment extends the format: SHP-YYYYMMDD-XXXXXXXX-YYYYYYYY where the last 8 characters identify the specific parcel.

The status updates as your parcel moves. You'll get an email + SMS at each of the bolded stages below.

• Booked — awaiting drop-off ✉️📲 — you've booked online. Bring the parcel to the origin office to start shipping.
• Received at origin ✉️📲 — the counter has your parcel and a receipt has been issued. It's not on the road yet — being prepared for dispatch.
• Processing — sorted and queued for the next outbound vehicle.
• Shipped — on the way ✉️📲 — your parcel has left the origin office and is in transit to the destination.
• At hub — arrived at an intermediate hub, awaiting the next leg. (No notification — too noisy on multi-hop routes.)
• Arrived at destination — ready for pickup ✉️📲 — the parcel reached the destination office. Recipient can collect at the counter, or wait for the delivery rider.
• Out for delivery ✉️📲 — the rider has the parcel and is on the way to the recipient. Please be available to receive it.
• Delivered ✉️📲 — handed to the recipient. Terminal status. Thank you for using us!
• Delivery missed — will retry ✉️📲 — rider tried but couldn't deliver. The notification includes the reason (no one home, locked premises, etc.) and the next attempt is queued for the next business day. We try up to 3 times. After that, the parcel waits at the destination office until the recipient collects it or calls to reschedule.
• Routing correction in progress ✉️📲 — we detected a small routing issue (e.g. your parcel ended up at the wrong sorting facility). Don't worry — we're putting it back on the right path. Your tracking number stays the same. The notification includes an updated ETA when we know it.
• Returned to Sender — could not be delivered; sent back.
• Exception — something needs attention; contact support with your shipment number.
• Cancelled ✉️📲 — shipment was cancelled before dispatch.

"Received at origin" and "Shipped" are two different moments — the first means we have your parcel at the counter, the second means it's actually on its way. The notification text reflects whichever just happened.

• Standard (STD) — reliable ground delivery within ~7 days. Cheapest non-economy option.
• Express (EXP) — 1–3 business days, priority handling. About 50% more than Standard.
• Overnight (OVN) — next business day on supported routes. About 2× Standard.
• Economy (ECO) — slowest option, up to 14 days, ~25% cheaper than Standard.
• Same Day (SMD) — local same-day delivery within ~200 km. Highest tier, ~3× Standard.
• Freight (FRT) — heavy/bulk cargo, minimum 100 kg per shipment. Lower per-kg rate, higher base.

Sacco partners (Mololine, Easy Coach, Modern Coast, etc.) offer the same service codes at lower prices on their own routes. When you book through a sacco's portal or counter, their rates apply automatically.

The quote you see is the final price including VAT. We don't tack on tax at checkout.

Under the hood:

Chargeable weight = the larger of actual weight (kg) or volumetric weight (L × W × H in cm, ÷ 5000). Big light boxes are billed by volume so we don't ship air.

Rates are banded by distance: 0–50 km, 51–200 km, 201–500 km, 501+ km. The platform default ladder is the premium courier ladder. Sacco operators have their own (cheaper) ladders.

When you build a shipment, each parcel can carry its own add-ons — so a laptop and a t-shirt going to the same place can be insured differently. Add-ons appear under each parcel once you've entered its size and weight.

• 🛡 Parcel insurance — pays out against a value you declare if the parcel is lost or damaged. When you tick insurance, a Declared value box appears and is required — that's the amount we insure (and the basis for the premium).
• ✍ Signature on delivery — the recipient signs for the parcel on the clerk's device when they collect it.
• 📸 Photo on delivery — the clerk photographs the hand-off so you have visual proof it reached a real person.
• 🍶 Fragile handling — flags the parcel for careful handling all along the route.

Adding and removing: tick an add-on right under the parcel to add it instantly — the running total updates. Click the small × next to an add-on to remove it. Insurance opens a short editor so you can set the declared value.

📡 One more add-on covers the whole shipment: on routes that offer it, you can also buy live tracking of the vehicle — it's picked once for the shipment (not per parcel) in the same booking step.

Why an add-on sometimes disappears: add-ons depend on both the drop-off and destination branches being able to handle them. If you change your route to branches that don't offer a particular add-on, we remove it automatically, refund it from your total, and show it struck through so you can pick a replacement. Different sacco operators offer different add-ons.

If you paid for signature, photo, or insurance add-ons, the proof appears on your shipment page once the parcel is delivered — as small thumbnails next to each add-on in the invoice. Click any thumbnail to enlarge it.

• Signature — you see the recipient's signature in full.
• Photo of hand-over — you see the delivery photo in full.
• ID verification — for insured parcels we verify the recipient's ID. You see a confirmation with the last 4 digits only.

Recipient privacy: to protect the person receiving your parcel, we mask their full ID number and never show their ID photograph to senders. The complete records are kept securely with our operations team for dispute resolution. If you believe a parcel went to the wrong person, reply to your delivery notification email and our team will review the unmasked records.

Email support@parcelmtandao.com with your shipment number and a description of the issue. Include a screenshot if it's a UI bug.

For payment, customs, or compliance questions, mention the keyword compliance in the subject line so it routes to the right team.