david*42 wrote: And even if the pickup carrier has no scanner, there's one at the PO when he gets back there with the packages.
But they still have to pick up the scanner and use it, and often they don't. (Believe me. I used to work for USPS. Thank goodness that's behind me!) Even if you go to the counter, watch them scan it in, and get a receipt back, sometimes it STILL doesn't get into the system until after it is scanned again somewhere else. I've seen it as both a shipper and a postal clerk.
It's really bad here, because this is a super small town with a branch office, not a real PO. (In other words, no postmaster, etc, just 1 window clerk and 1 mail carrier.) They can scan all the packages they want, but if the main PO in the next town over doesn't upload that scanner info into the main system, the packages will be MIA until they get to the main processing center in Eugene or Portland. I've had packages that were mailed here on Monday morning (scanned), then went to JC on Mon afternoon, then Eugene on Mon night, then Portland Tue am, before finally leaving the state on Wed. But the tracking showed it was mailed Wednesday in Eugene, came back here later that day, then got scanned in Portland 10 min later (It's 2 hrs away), then went back to JC 2 min after that, before finally being put on a plane in Eugene!?! Physically impossible, plus it also makes it dang hard to prove I mailed it from here on Monday! But when they enter it later, it's often entered in the wrong order with arbitrary scan times, because they don't know/care. They want to cover their own backside, not yours, so who cares if it's not perfect.
I've learned to make the extra 20 min drive to JC with my packages. Even if I shove them in the drop box and leave without a receipt, they have way better odds of getting into the system within 24 hours if shipped from JC, even though the package takes EXACTLY the same amount of time to reach the buyer, because mail from both stations goes out the same day on the same truck!
