What can this possibly mean?

I send things out as soon as they are paid for. Unless I am away from home for business or vacation, things are immediately packed and brought over to the post office. Luckily for me the post office is not even a mile away from my home. That benefits the buyers and me! I can easily make more than one trip in one day - so sometimes if an item is paid for after my trip to the post office I will happily go again.

The way it works is that when the item is paid for through PAYPAL you get a listing that allows you to print and pay for all of your labels at one time. How convenient! It's great - the post office sends the boxes right to your home and you just peel the label and put it right on the package. I love this! Sometimes I have as many as 20 things to pack and ship - so this convenience is great. I used to have to write out all of the labels - this was so time consuming.

At Christmas though I received an email from someone who had bought a Marc Jacobs bag for his wife and it didn't come in time. It should have - Priority mail is really good and gets where it is going within 2-3 days! This time it didn't and he emailed me and asked me to trace the package. Now I have always assumed that because you are given a tracking number that this would be easy! NO! I traced it and received the information that a shipping label had been purchased but nothing more! What I learned was that the package is brought to the post office and sent on its way and is NOT SCANNED! It doesn't get scanned (generally) until it arrives at the buyer's post office. I also learned that you can't even ask the post master to scan it - therefore there is NO PROOF that you have sent the package off. Only proof that you have purchased a mailing label. If you buy your labels through the United States Post Office site online you can receive a sheet that the postmaster CAN SCAN! THEN you would have proof that you did indeed MAIL your package.

Unfortunately it is much more time consuming to purchase online through USPS as you have to put in all of your information manually. With PayPal the information is there in its entirety. What to do? What to do? I admit that I prefer purchasing the label through PayPal - the connection right to eBay is also a good thing. So far I have been lucky - all packages have been received. The Marc Jacobs bag in question had been received the next day and then of course the tracking info showed that the item was received. Too little too late I would think.

BUT - what does this mean?
I received an email from someone who bought a wonderful pair of Pink Suede Prada slides. The item was sent out by me on December 13th and I received an email from her just a week ago saying that she did not receive the shoes...............oh, a seller's biggest nightmare! So I tracked the package and got this message............

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Label/Receipt Number: LC06 3691 832U S Information for this item is stored in files offline.

I have since emailed the buyer many times and have not heard from her. I do not know whether or not she has received the shoes and just hope that not hearing from her means that the item has indeed been received. But I am truly confused by the tracking info from USPS. The only good thing though - is that it shows that the item has indeed been sent out.

BUT I am really confused by this information given to me when tracking the package.
INFORMATION FOR THIS ITEM IS STORED IN FILES OFFLINE! I really wonder what that means. I think that I will take the tracking info to my post office - I wonder if he can find out for me. I will keep you posted.