eBay phantom USPS delivered on Standard Envelope ?
mcolney1
Posts: 981 ✭✭✭
This has happened now several times. I will check tracking on an eBay Standard Envelope delivery and it will say delivered. But, it hasn't been delivered! This alarmed me the first two times, but alas, the card has arrived to my mailbox a day or two later???? Very odd and that has never happened with a small packages, just envelopes. Anyone else have this happen to them?
Collecting Topps, Philadelphia and Kellogg's from 1964-1989
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Can't happen with small packages as that is "real" tracking where the postal delivery person actually physically scans the package at your mailbox/house.
The Standard Envelope is fake tracking per se.. The scans are only from passing through the sorting machines, and then the delivery "scan" is fake and is based on a time estimate of when it goes through the last sorting machine and the "bag" of mail is scanned in at the delivery post office. It's just assumed that it will get delivered the same day it reaches the delivery post office, but that doesn't always happen.
This is what you have to put up with if you don't want to pay an extra $3 for first class package service..
Thanks and a wonderful explanation!
well said, I have had to deal with this many times. panicked buyers and sometimes eBay claims immediately. essentially when they pass the scanner in the local area, they say delivered. But reality is that they are actually delivered between 1-7 days from that point what I have seen
They pass the scanner, and it's assumed they will be delivered soon, but they then often jam the machine as they make their way through the sorting gates, either because they are packed to rigidly, or with too many cards. The square cardboard mailers are the worst, because even if they make it to the intended bin on the machine, their high center of gravity coupled with the speed at which they are moving, often times this will cause them to flip over into the adjacent bin, or even completely out of the bin and onto the floor.
These items often then get sent to manual sorting. But guess what? The USPS absolutely hates spending man hours on manual sorting. So anything that looks at first glance like it's "machinable" gets sent back into automaton, to a "bulky" machine with thicker belt gaps, with all of the other mail that has been rejected by the automation clerks for one reason or another, to start the process all over again. That machine jams constantly, because the public is a bunch of idiots. They mail Jolly Ranchers and Smarties to their BFF, ink pens and metal rulers to their insurance customers, tax returns with 47 pages stuffed into a regular envelope...moral of the story, if you are a buyer, you don't want your cards ending up on that machine.
If by chance, it makes it through there without incident, and ends up in the correct bin this time, it gets sent to the machine that sorts it to the 5 digit zip code for Delivery Point Sequence. Guess what? Those belts are the regular width. Jam, jam, jam all over again, and culled by the operator and sent to the manual sorting unit where it starts all over again. Somebody glances at the mail, determined it's "machinable", and sends it back to the bulky machine. Wash, rinse, repeat...
That's the truth nobody wants to tell you as to why it takes multiple days for your cards to arrive once they're scanned as "delivered". They spend multiple days looping around inside the USPS, being bent around and stuck in various spots in the machines, until eventually they end up at the post office where the carrier finally takes it out for delivery. EBay doesn't care, the USPS doesn't care, the sellers obviously don't care. As a buyer, there is no way I would want my cards shipped with the eBay Standard Envelopes.
Truth.
This could be a classic example of the situation above
I have had several packages (yellow bubble mailers) that are marked delivered, but aren't. They usually arrive next day. I check with informeddelivery.usps.com and get daily emails on mail and packages that most of you do as well. However, our mail delivery has been inconsistent/unreliable with sub route drivers a lot.