[Nexus 4 General] hunnymonster:
There seems to be a knowledge gap amongst some posters how the shipping via courier works. Having worked in a logistics role in the past and been end to end with 3 of the major couriers in the country I'm just putting down a quick few words on how it works (or is supposed to). I'll use an example of a parcel going from Glasgow to Aberdeen by TNT, you could equally substitute any other 2 points in the UK - it all goes via Birmingham(!))

There is no way on this earth that C2000 are going to be shipping out boxes of phones to each TNT depot for them to print the labels - rate of shrinkage (euphemism: theft) would be immense. They're going to want this lot tracked to within an inch of it's life - if someone farts near it they'll want that recorded...

So let's say I've decided to send a parcel... from Glasgow to Aberdeen. So I pack it all up and book it in with TNT. TNT generates a waybill with my reference on (so I can print the label) and also assigns it an internal TNT parcel number. At this stage I can tell the recipient that it's coming via TNT and they can track using the reference (or the TNT parcel number if I can be bothered to read it from the waybill). At this point the parcel is still in my possession - and although TNT know about it, it doesn't exist on the web tracker until it's in their possession (depending on the courier that might be as the driver picks it up or as it arrives in the collection depot). It will be scanned in by the collection driver ("collection scan").

The collection driver turns up. Picks up all my parcels and scans them all in. They still don't go live in tracking (but they are now known by the internal TNT system) until he returns to the depot and they are scanned at "collection depot inbound" - now within a few minutes they should definitely be live on the web tracker.

In the collection depot, all "same depot" parcels are extracted (so in my case anything shipping directly out for the Glasgow depot in the morning). Everything else gets shunted off ("trunked") to the hub depot, which is usually between J1 & J10 on the M6 for most UK couriers (simply because by being there they can be "central" in a weighted mean fashion to the vast majority of their business - it's also handy for the UK's major freight airport - Castle Donnington/East Midlands - for the International stuff). As the parcels are loaded for trunking, they are scanned ("collection depot outbound").

At the hub depot, it's all scanned once more (hub inbound") - and the parcels are sorted out by destination depot - so my parcel to Aberdeen gets put in the pile for Aberdeen, other parcels get put in the trunking run for wherever they're bound. Once more they are scanned "hub outbound". The truck chugs up to Aberdeen with my parcel on board.

At the delivery depot - the parcels are scanned again. "Delivery Depot Inbound". Then sorted out in the delivery depot into the various van runs. They are scanned once more "Delivery depot outbound". TNT driver then drives it to the delivery address, where he scans it once more "Customer delivery" and gets you to sign for it.

So... all our parcels are originating from Computer 2000, Lutterworth, Leicestershire. They will most likely be shipped direct to the TNT Hub which will act as both collection depot & hub in this instance. They will then be sorted out by TNT just like any other package to the right destination depots and progressed just like any other parcel as above.