Arriving late - relative to what?

[iamonourside]

USPS tracking reports an item will be arriving late. Is that relative to the expected delivery date shown? Or does that expected delivery date change as the package stutters its way along? Thank you.

[a_c_green]

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@iamonourside wrote:

USPS tracking reports an item will be arriving late. Is that relative to the expected delivery date shown?

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 Yes. When the package first enters the mailstream, there may or may not be an estimated date of delivery, but one will eventually appear. Beyond that point, if the system decides that the package is never going to make it in time, it will cough up the Arriving Late notification. (I'm talking here about the USPS estimates only, nothing to do with eBay's own delivery date estimates.)