01-16-2026 10:45 AM
Just a minor gripe. I have a small part time PO I deal with. The postmaster is great. With the latest USPS changes, any mail a customers drops off on any day does NOT leave that office until the next morning when the local mail is dropped off. There are NO more afternoon pickups. As a result, everything takes 2-3 days longer to get where it is going. This is occurring in most post offices now. Strangely, ALL my packages tracking say they left the PO around noon the same day they were accepted. Postmaster has no idea why the tracking says that, he is not doing it. So I must wonder is USPS putting in some sort of automatic tracking just to make it look like your packages are moving when in reality they are not? Can I please have some honesty for once? smh
01-16-2026 11:40 AM
How does 'shipping out 1 DAY later' equate to "2-3 Days longer'??
I know the answer.
It doesn't.
If your packages are showing 'same day' then their 'scanner' is off (not dialed in correctly).
Every PO is different, depends on volume, population etc. Some get 1 truck a day, others 3 a day. Some trucks show at 10am, others at 5am. Depends on where it's coming from and where all it is going to. Trucks don't just go to 1 location.
Therefore, It's NOT a blanket statement and you will NOT find an 'answer' that does not vary.
01-16-2026 12:03 PM - edited 01-16-2026 12:04 PM
The goal of the changes made at the time of the one trip to the distribution center/day change was a 2 day increase in time to deliver.
60% of the POs, those which are more than 50 miles from the nearest distribution center, get only one trip per day. That is not volume related.
Both were part of the USPS announcement of these changes.
That part of the OPs post is absolutely correct.
Scans showing the local PO are definitely not occurring in the PO. I have verified that with my own PO. They are being automatically generated at the first distribution center. The time shown on them is some period of time before it reached the distribution center. In my case it is a period which is shorter than it takes to reach the distribution center.
Could the interval between when the phony scan appears to have occurred and when it is triggered be different in different places - why not?
Complicating matters is the fact that at any given time, the USPS tracking and estimated delivery date displayed by Ebay may not reflect what the USPS website shows. When the Ebay site updates the tracking data is not predictable.
01-16-2026 12:24 PM
@greatstuff80 wrote:Can I please have some honesty for once? smh
Right now the current administration is trying to do everything they can to slow down USPS for a couple of reasons:
1) So they can claim USPS is underperforming and try to privatize it and turn it into UPS (if you think small parcels cost a lot NOW just wait till they do this!)
2) So they can throw out mail-in ballots, claiming they didn't arrive in time.
Mr. DeJoy is doing everything they hoped for and more. Elections have consequences.
01-16-2026 12:33 PM
@kibble-net wrote:
Mr. DeJoy is doing everything they hoped for and more. Elections have consequences.
I thought he was gone?
01-16-2026 12:47 PM
Dejoy is gone, having proved that one cannot maintain the service levels USPS had and make a profit.
Making it worse will not serve the administration's interests, in itself.
Expect a proposal to sell it off piecemeal, if they could find anyone who would buy it.
The recent changes might affect whether anyone will be interested in bidding. There is little doubt that there are cost savings in the 60% which were affected.
01-16-2026 01:21 PM
@greatstuff80 wrote:Just a minor gripe. I have a small part time PO I deal with. The postmaster is great. With the latest USPS changes, any mail a customers drops off on any day does NOT leave that office until the next morning when the local mail is dropped off. There are NO more afternoon pickups. As a result, everything takes 2-3 days longer to get where it is going. This is occurring in most post offices now.
It is indeed happening at POs that are more than 50 miles from their origin sort facility, as others have already noted, but a 1-day delay in collection does not become a 2-3 delay to get where it's going. Once it's in the mailstream, it's moving at the same speed as everything else.
As long as your PO is doing an Acceptance scan as they are expected to do, eBay will recognize that you have shipped the package. Whether it's delayed by a day going forward (as mine are) doesn't matter.
If your PO is consistently failing to scan packages when received, and complaints to the regional office are not working, then consider extending your Handling time just long enough so that scans that will occur (when Accepted at origin sort) will not be late in eBay's eyes.
01-16-2026 01:31 PM - edited 01-16-2026 01:54 PM
I was just making an observation how things work where I am. I am not worried about ebay. I don't sell much so I don't worry about it. Again just telling what it's like where I'm at. My postmaster scans them accepted right in front of me and hand writes and stamps a receipt for me. They do not have the machines that print out receipts. It sits there overnight, then goes and sits 20 miles down the road at another PO another day where it doesn't get scanned coming or going at all. Both postmasters have confirmed the packages are there and they are not scanning packages leaving their facilities. They're friends and we gab about how nuts it is all the time. They have no control over any of it and just do what they're told and hope their jobs are still there tomorrow. Quite a few have lost their jobs already. Package shipped Monday didn't get to our local main distribution center until Thursday when it finally gets a real ? scan again. It used to be same or next day. It's quite obvious USPS is auto generating scans that are not accurate. Welcome to rural America.
01-16-2026 02:28 PM
@kibble-net So you are claiming fraud 11 months before an election?
Yeah, if I had a bunch of nutcases representing my party, I'd be worried, too. 😆
01-16-2026 03:28 PM
Wasn't trump always claiming fraud.