I had a weird experience a few years ago (and posted about it here, of course). I ordered something on Amazon, a very usual occurrence as I place hundreds of orders each year there. A few days later I receive a package from WalMart, in a WalMart box, delivered by WalMart, and sold by WalMart, with my delivery address. Inside that package was the item I ordered from Amazon. After a bit of further investigation, it appeared that I ordered from a third-party on Amazon (back then, it wasn’t as clear as it is today, and even today it isn’t always so clear) and they simply ordered the item at WalMart to be shipped to me. Apparently the price difference made it worth it for them to do so (in other words, whatever the costs to the seller were from WalMart were less than what Amazon paid the for the sale via the Amazon site). Or, possibly, they simply ran out of the item and were willing to eat any extra cost but still keep the customer (me) happy. Anyway, it was some generic item (I don’t even remember what it was, maybe toilet paper or paper towels or dishwasher tablets or the like) and it was identical, so I didn’t care who shipped it to me. But it was indeed VERY confusing and a little odd at the time.
I don’t think it would be even possible to track it on the amazon site. That’s because they track things via order number. And there was no amazon order number! A similar thing happens with amazon registry purchases, but in that case, they have a way to “share” orders numbers between the account that ordered it (the one giving the gift) and the account that set up the registry. And different fields in the order are available for each. For example, the delivery address is not shown to the account that placed the order, just a description set up by the creator of the registry (for example “
Bob and Mary’s new apartment”).