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Comment by zippergz | Hacker News Reader

I've definitely gotten the sense that the flip side of that is happening - in many cases, items get marked as "shipped" when the label is printed, but often shippers don't hand the package off to the carrier until days later. I can't prove it but sometimes it very much feels like sellers, especially on platforms like etsy and ebay, make sure to print the label immediately and mark the item as shipped so they can claim fast shipping, but then are in no hurry whatsoever to actually get the package in transit. Maybe this is not nefarious and is just a side effect of the way the systems work together, but as a customer it's pretty annoying. For me it's less about how long it takes to get the item and more about feeling mislead on whether it is actually on its way or not.

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That definitely happens, I don't think it's intentionally nefarious though.

They tend to package and label orders as they come in, that's the only thing you can do to be efficient -- you can't let them build up.

But then they only drop off (or get pickup) 2x/week, e.g. Tues and Fri. Which might be fine if that's what their shipping times indicate.

But then the buyer gets confused because they assume it was mailed immediately, which it wasn't. But there's no way for a seller to print shipping labels from eBay in advance without eBay marking it as "shipped".

It gets even more confusing because with bulk pickups or dropoffs, they often don't even get scanned when the carrier receives them. They won't show as actually in the carrier's hands until they reach the first major hub, which can easily be a day or even two later.

>I've definitely gotten the sense that the flip side of that is happening - in many cases, items get marked as "shipped" when the label is printed, but often shippers don't hand the package off to the carrier until days later.

AIUI, Amazon's policy is that credit cards don't get charged until the order ships.

As such, some shadier folks will create the label long before the item is actually shipped. However, since the label has been created, the order is now marked as "shipped" and the credit card is charged even though nothing has been packed, let alone actually shipped.

Delivery companies in Europe have an initial status of something like "notification of package received", which should be followed by "package received from sender".

I assume they do this to avoid complaints of slow delivery when the sender takes a whole to post the item.

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