Tracking Numbers From The Po Don't Work

I take the book I sold on ebay, all packaged up, to the post office. It's covered in stamps, so no cash changes hands.

The clerk adds up the stamps each time, even though I have the total written on the package. I get my receipt with a tracking number.

I type the number into ebay, and it comes up invalid. The USPS site says the same thing. This is the number printed on my receipt from the USPS.

I scan the QR code on the receipt and get a completely different tracking number. That one is in the system—though it says the package was logged several hours after the clerk printed my receipt.

What is going on?

Human error.

You have the tracking number, end of story.

USPS tracking numbers get recycled every 120 days or so. The original number was replaced with the "real" functional number.

I've double check the numbers, I know I am not past mistyping something.

This is all happening within a day of being at the post office. Not enough time to recycle numbers.

Time has nothing to do with it.

Your USPS tracking number might change because of tracking number recycling, where old numbers are reused, causing old data to appear until scanned; a package consolidation, bundling items under one number; or sometimes a new number is generated after the initial scan. The most common reason for apparent changes or glitches is the system recycling numbers before old data clears, but once your package is scanned, new tracking information should override the old.

On occasion, I have to wait an hour or so for the tracking number from the receipt to be available online.
It is curious that the QR code gets you a different tracking number, I just tried one of my old receipts, and going from the QR code appends 7 digits in front of the tracking number from the receipt. But the rest of the number is the same.

This tracking number was generated at the post office.




Yep. Same with labels generated by ebay.

This is the followng day, and the number is still not working.




I just double checked, and see the same thing. So now I have two questions:

Why does the system generate two differnt tracking numbers?

and

Why does one of them not work and the other does?

I bought a book from Texas a year ago. I'm in Oregon. No sweat, right?
It was missing for a couple weeks then it was scanned in Guam!
I got it a couple weeks later.

@guykickinit: So, it was a travel book?