Tracking, and its absence
A missing tracking number is not evidence of anything. Understanding why it is often deliberate makes an order without one much less stressful.
What a tracking number is
A record linking a parcel to a route and usually to a point where it entered the system. It exists to help the carrier and it helps anybody else who reads it just as much, which is the entire reason some sellers decline to generate one.
Why sparse updates are normal
Scans happen at handover points rather than continuously, so a parcel can move for days with nothing appearing. A record that shows dispatch and then silence for a week is the usual behaviour of a system that only reports at checkpoints, not evidence that something is stuck.
What to do with no tracking at all
Fall back on the interval arithmetic and the release timer. Those two numbers tell you everything a tracking record would have told you about whether to act, which is the only decision tracking would have informed anyway.
When a number is provided
Check it once every few days rather than repeatedly. Watching a record that updates at checkpoints produces anxiety and no information, and the temptation to act on a stalled scan is where people start pressing a seller who has done nothing wrong.
A stalled record is not a lost parcel
The most common cause is a parcel between checkpoints. The second most common is a scan that was missed. Genuinely lost items exist and are rarer than the number of complaints about them suggests, and they resolve through the dispute process rather than through the carrier.
What never to do with a tracking number
Do not contact the carrier about it, and do not open an investigation with them. Doing so attaches a name and a query to a parcel that had neither, which is the opposite of what anybody involved wanted.
What tracking would have told you
Only whether to act, and the interval arithmetic already answers that. Once you notice that a tracking record informs no decision you were not already able to make, an order without one stops feeling worse than an order with one.
A number that never activates
Occasionally a number is issued and never registers a scan. That usually means a label was created and the parcel entered the system another way, or the scan was skipped at handover. It is not proof of anything, and the same deadline logic applies as if no number existed.