None of the scans for a book that I sent is available on the USPS website. I used PBS postage and it does appear on PBS, but the last three scans make no sense -

• 11/14/2012 6:20 PM - Enroute - KANSAS CITY,KS
• 11/14/2012 9:55 PM - Enroute - KANSAS CITY,KS
• 11/14/2012 10:09 PM - Enroute - KANSAS CITY,KS

How could it be enroute from the same city three times on the same day?

Maybe if it's media mail it gets scanned to get on a truck out, then gets bumped by priority mail. Or different people are scanning different piles of packages and they overlapped. Or the same scan list was uploaded into the system more than once.

The scans above aren't that unusual. I've seen a lot of questions about it happening before, and have seen them on my own books.

The USPS moves a lot of stuff, and from now until after Christmas is going to keep them pretty busy. It can start to look freaky at times, if you're lucky enough to get any scans at all.

That's not odd at all. Mail can be palleted or crated in the big sorting centers and scanned every time that pallet moves around the center. Kansas City is a pretty big sorting center I believe. You could see multiple scan go on for days there.

I think they also use conveyer belts with overhead scanners and it wouldn't be surprising for a media mail package to be left on the belt and hit the scanner a few times before it's finally moved somewhere.

Whenever I use PBS DC going from my town, it's always scanned three times.  She told me why, but don't remember now.  I know it's scanned when I'm at the counter (I make sure of that), then I think it's scanned again for the tracking strip, and then one more time (but can't remember why that one), then it goes on it's way to Des Moines, and more recently Kansas City.  It also will quite often get scanned 3 times when it reaches it's destination.  Pat

It also could be scanned a few times depending on the machine.  The first could be the canceller/sorter, then the general machine to break down into classes of mail then finally sorted with the media mail.  I worked at a Mail Processing Center and there are mostly machines handling the mail now, totally different from when I first started.