On my path to decreasing my handling time metrics with Amazon, I’ve discovered a few things.
It appears Amazon uses PDT year-round. Looking back at my scans before March 8, 2026, all of the Amazon tracking shows PDT instead of PST. During the busiest online shopping season of the year, I am penalized with my Colorado shipment scan times not being converted to the Pacific time zone.
Has anyone ever noticed this?
If Amazon is keeping it holistic and using pure UTC time year-round, that’s cool and all, but the customer and seller-facing data should be converted to the correct time zone and daylight / standard time for Amazon’s home office in Seattle (Pacific Zone).
This hurts DST sellers’ handling time metrics in the busiest shopping season of the year.
Amazon does seem to change PST to PDT on the order itself as can be seen above. Look at the March 2 order and you can see PST on the order date and ship by date while the deliver by date is PDT.
What we couldn’t verify was the scans of orders that were delivered. It does seem that currently all scans on orders appear as PDT from the ones we can view prior to March 8 and those after March 8.
Amazon could have that spot of code as PST during that time of the year and PDT during the other time of the year so orders that are right before the time change show the wrong PST / PDT depending on the time of the year. In other words, February orders change to PDT when the time change occurs and October orders change to PST when the time change occurs. In other words, it only shows as the current PST or PDT when viewing scans and doesn’t account for orders being viewed prior to the change before they fall off and can’t be viewed at all.
We haven’t had an issue with scans and OTDR reporting.
I never bothered to look at the order times. Here’s one before DST:
And the tracking info for the same order:
Interesting.
There was a thread on the NSFE from someone who had an order come in after midnight (he’s on the west coast) that had to ship out that day. I made a joke that maybe Amazon didn’t set their clocks.
He then mentioned that his payout hits an hour later during the summer; something I’ve noticed in the past as well. So it may be a real effect.
Can anyone reading this that uses USPS through Amazon Buy Shipping compare your first carrier scan time vs. the PDT time being reported on the order details page - and tell me if it is adjusted correctly from your time zone to PDT?
In my case, 90% of the time the scan is not being converted to PDT. I suspected it was a scanner issue - but I’ve had the same scanner produce both the correct and incorrect times within the same drop-off - items scanned within seconds of each other.
I’m trying to determine if this is a USPS server or Amazon server issue, and not a rogue scanner issue.
From yesterday, item scanned on USPS site as May 5, 2026, 10:44 am which is correct time for us in CDT time and when we dropped off the item.
Same package on Amazon site shows this scan as Tue, May 5, 2026, 10:44 AM PDT so no the Amazon site did not label the time stamp correctly as this scan would have been 8:44 AM PDT.
Amazon server is not converting USPS server data into correct time in PDT time. It is simply picking up the time from USPS in our time zone and labeling it as PDT time.
A scanner issue would show up on USPS site. The scanners are programed with the date and time through set up along with location (zip of USPS office attached to). Sometimes there are issues with a scanner at a USPS location. If the clerk starts the scans with one scanner and then switched midstream, then you could get two packages that were processed at the same relative time but come up with different time stamps on the scans. When these scanners are uploaded, the server accepts the time stamp on the scanner as the time of the event.
We drop off at the counter and get a scan of each package. If you drop off a batch of packages at the loading dock, those packages get processed during that office’s work flow. If you drop off at 4pm, those packages may or may not get their first scan before midnight. The scan sheet may have been scanned but it is the first scan on the package that gets reported as accepted. This can create a problem with Amazon.
There are several post offices that have had there outgoing mail leave the next day (like ours). The packages we drop off today will not leave the post office until tomorrow. It is very important that our packages get scanned when we drop them off because the next scan will be the following day around 4 to 5pm when they reach the USPS distribution center.
We would agree that what you are seeing is an Amazon issue. Today, we had a package that on USPS site was a Zone 4 - $5.40 and yet Amazon charged it as Zone 7 - $5.72. That is a coding error which we have seen several times over the years. We would note that we have only seen it once or twice where the Amazon price was lower and can assure you that we received an “other charge” later on for those orders. However, we have never received a credit for the over charges.
Thank you so much for this. I get the same results - the correct local time appears on USPS but on Amazon the time is not adjust to PDT - except about 10% of the time.
This means I can safely rule out the scanner being the issue.
I just checked one of my shipments. Scanned here at 7:58 EDT; shows on Amazon as scan at 7:58 PDT. Considering it’s only 6:22 on the west coast, certainly not right.
