Tracking

Customers have no account in Bottle and never will. What they have is an email, and the email carries a link to a page that answers the only question they have: where is my gas?

The reference

Every order gets a reference when it is taken: ten letters and digits, shown as two halves, such as 7K3M9-QWXZ2. It leaves out the characters that look like each other, so it survives being read out over the phone. It is at the top of the order in Bottle, in the email that says the order was taken, and in the on-its-way email.

Opening the page

The link in the email fills the reference in, so the customer types only their postcode. Somebody who has the reference from a phone call types both, and the filled-in one can be corrected if the link was mangled. The two have to agree, and a wrong reference and a wrong postcode get the same answer, so the page gives nothing away to somebody with only one of them. Too many tries from one place and it stops answering for a few minutes.

What it says

One line at the top, in their words:

• Waiting for your payment. A pay-first order the customer has not paid. The link in their email is how; nothing is scheduled until then.
• Ordered, with Expected Tuesday 22 to Wednesday 23 September in a box of its own: the days promised when the order was taken, from the delivery option or the day the office picked. Shown until a round names a real day.
• Coming on Tuesday, with a two-hour window once the round has a time to leave. The same window the on-its-way email gives, worked out the same way.
• On its way today, with the window, You are drop 4 of 9, and which drop the driver is on now. This is the part people refresh. It goes once the drop is made.
• Not today, sorry. The driver could not make it and the office will be in touch about another day.
• Delivered, with the day. Cancelled, if it was.

Then what is coming, as a list. No prices: the page is for the person waiting in, who may not be the person paying.

The map

Under the headline, a small map with their address pinned. While the van is out and their drop is still to do, the van is on it too, as an icon where the driver’s phone last said it was, with the time beside it. The page asks again every few minutes; it is not live, and it says so. A position a few minutes old answers “are they close”, and nobody needs a driver’s every turn.

Only their own address is on the map. Not the other drops, not the route, not the yard. A map of the whole round would hand every customer a list of who else buys gas in their street, and that is their neighbours’ business, not theirs.

Not going to be in?

Under that, three choices: do not leave it; leave it with a neighbour, and which; leave it in a safe place, and where. Saved, it appears on the driver’s screen against the drop before they knock.

A tick box keeps the choice on the delivery address, so the next order to that door starts from it. Left unticked, it is for this order only.

The page says plainly, before they choose, that the driver decides at the door. Cylinders are valuable and can be dangerous, and a place that looks safe from the kitchen may not from the pavement. A driver who keeps the order on the van marks it Could not, the customer has already been told this can happen, and the office arranges another day.

Once an order is delivered or cancelled the page still opens, but there is nothing left to change.

In the office

The office can set the same thing on an address, under the customer, for the door that always wants it round the back. The reference and Copy tracking link are at the top of every order, for the customer who rings instead.