Post-dated letter sent from out of town......usps post office workers---help!?

Question

Complicated situation, I'll try to make it clear!

A letter was post-dated for Nov 30 here in San Francisco.

The person mailing the letter went to San Luis Obispo for the Thanksgiving holiday, say Nov 21.

The letter was dropped into the mail November 26 in San Luis. (The 26th was Sunday, so we expected it to be processed on the 27th).

The recipient of the letter received it Dec 2 with a Nov 30th postmark, postmarked not from San Luis Obispo where it was supposedly mailed from, but postmarked with a San Francisco
instead.

My question: Is it possible that the letter got kicked back to SF by the post office in SLB? What is the policy with post-dated letters that are sent from out of town?

Question for anyone in SLB post office or familiar with it: Is mail from SLB ever post-marked with a SF postmark?

thanks!

Answer 1

San Luis Obispo probably sends their mail to the nearest General Mail Facility (GMF), which is probably San Francisco. At the GMF, they process the mail for most of the area, running it through the mark (cancellation machine). A lot of local post offices no longer cancel their own mail, since the USPS feels that it is more efficient for all the mail to be sent to a GMF for cancellation, barcoding, and sorting.

It's possible that the letter may have been delayed in getting processed because of the holiday since the PO was closed on Thanksgiving day.