Why Is My Package Heading East Instead Of West?

Hello:I bought an item on Ebay and the seller is using your USPS services. He is located in Iowa and I am out in California. I looked on the tracking report today and noticed that it had gone from Iowa to MO. and the package is now in Greensville, North Carolina!!?? Is that a proper route for getting to the Western States via the East Coast?Thank you.

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Answer #1: Posted by BusterDoogen on May 12th, 2016 11:20 AM

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BusterDoogen

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Zip codes

1. Originally, letters and packages were sorted by hand. Pick up the piece, read the address, toss it in the right slot or bin. Slow but reasonably sure.

2. Then machine processing came in. The operator had one second to read the address as the machine moved it past him, and he hit the keys to direct it to the bin for that zip code.

3. Then OCR / Optical Character Reading came in. A camera scanned the piece and in a fraction of a second, the computer sorted the piece and imprinted the zip code/bar code.

4. Once the machine sends the piece on its way to a misread or misprinted zip, it won't be corrected until it gets there, and sometimes, until it gets there and there and there, too.
At some point, a computer may catch an error and shunt the piece off for manual processing.

I hope this is helpful to you!

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