I can shed a little light on this. Since 9/11 happened in the states and the mailing of deadly things, states have a choke point that all domestic mail goes through.This ofcourse includes post received in from other countries. In my state, everything in the southern half of the state goes to a SINGLE sorting facility. Whether it is bulk stuff going out or in. From there it goes to the airports or trucks. When coming in, similar. Sacks of mail and packages are dumped off and then go from there.
About a year ago, I sent a priority package, a birthday gift to a friend. Normally 2-3 days. As usual. It hit our states scanning facility and the tracking number went dead. Didn't move. I contacted the post office for a "What the F" conversation. Well being in a smaller area, they looked up the date and picked another tracking number of a similar package sent the same way. Results were the same. The answer was this. "We load packages into large bags and bins. They all go to "PLACE X" and they are scanned and then sorted and move on to the airport , etc. The other package has been sitting there just as long". They said it is common AND EASY for this bag to get tossed in some out of the place area that goes missed for a while. When it is found, it is processed. Long story short it sat there 3 weeks before it was found and all things in that bag were then sent on their way. And no this was not during a holiday time frame.
And in our state, yeah, things coming in all hit that same choke point, but here it is about sorting. No scanning for airborne toxins, etc. And things have stopped dead here for a while. So this is the ins and outs. Best thing is as stated. Stop hitting refresh on it and let it be. It is probably in some corner of the facility. And eventually it will be found and forwarded on. Sadly my friend was upset he didn't get his gift by his birthday but was just as happy the same.
If this ever happens when sending things, to be creative, grab a stack of Tracker codes found in most post offices that you can fill out yourself (If they still do that) and look at hte number order. They are not sequential but close enough. You can start tracking similar numbers and see if patterns emerge. But that is just too much work /default_biggrin.png Just let er ride and know you are probably safe. (Not to mention unless it is insured, you have no recourse anyway).