All good info so far, I'll only add one tiny tidbit...
I can hand a package to our local post office staff and watch them scan it in. I'll then go home and see that the status hasn't changed. It's still got the original message the OP saw. It can stay this way for hours at least. Usually until the next day when I check again.
Then, it'll show the exact time the USPS received it, matching the time I saw them scan it. Weird. And probably a bit frustrating for the buyer.
On an unrelated note, I've also seen Amazon sellers wait a long time between printing the label and physically shipping the product. Maybe I should start watching for this and dinging them on the reviews. A couple of times it was clearly a deliberately false claim on their part, designed to mislead me about the delivery date. So far it hasn't happened on any time-critical order, but we should probably all work together to discourage this practice.
|