Quote Originally Posted by F6Dave View Post
When I order something online, as soon as I get the tracking number from the vendor I go to the USPS/UPS/FedEx/DHL website and sign up for email alerts. After than I get a message every time the item gets scanned along the way, including when the item gets delivered to my mail box or porch. Those alerts always include the date, time, location, as well as info like 'in-transit' or 'delivered'. Occasionally there's a missing update, but I've never received a bogus update that claimed the item was delivered when it actually wasn't. I can see how a shady vendor can generate a 'label created' event for an item that doesn't exist, but how can they fool the carrier's system into logging a phony 'picked up' or 'delivered' scan?
That is my bewilderment for what happened to me recently.

Like I said, I ordered an item from Ebay (a replacement Kate Spade container that I broke - my wife's) and the seller generated a shipping label dated a day earlier than when I placed the order. I found out about this when I finally received the USPS tracking number a week later, and I looked at the tracking history of it.

No idea how the scammer did this. How do you create a shipping label for an item a day before it is even ordered? This all had to be done nefariously and the only way I caught on to it (and Paypal) was the label creation -vs- order date.