@missjen316 wrote:
I mean that the item is scanned every step of the way and that information is uploaded to the website in real-time. the OP proves that they don't do that. They have a receipt with the acceptance scan yet when the package is tracked, it shows nothing. Tracking isn't updated immediately, there are delays.
Okay, I don't think anyone's ever promised that the tracking would be "real-time," for however you choose to define that, nor is it all that critical. We're not tracking emergency vehicles. They do, however, describe the tracking as "end-to-end," such as in this popular press release from 2014:
Claim: There’s no tracking on delivery confirmation or signature confirmation until a package reaches its destination.
Truth: This is incorrect information. USPS replaced “Delivery Confirmation” last year with “USPS Tracking,” which better reflects end-to-end tracking from the acceptance of a package to final destination, including confirmation of delivery.
By the time a package leaves a processing site, it will have received at least two scans. The package will have received four more scan events by the time it’s delivered.
Older USPS scanners uploaded their data to the regional network every fifteen minutes. The new ones upload every 90 seconds. The fastest tracking update I was able to observe first-hand was when I met the carrier in our driveway, watched her scan the arriving package, and then received my email tracking update of a Delivered status 7 minutes later. Taking into account network latency and such, that was probably on the low end of the scale, too (especially since I'm using a Hotmail account for my tracking update notifications 
). At other times of the day, the upload may be either faster or slower (e.g. the queues may be held during system backups, then released again later). So no, it's not instantaneous or real-time, but it does get logged eventually.
