USPS tracking is not very reliable

Some people who are new to shipping are surprised that USPS tracking for international packages is not very reliable. They think it works the same way as FedEx. That is not true.  For example some USPS packages get stuck with a status showing: INTERNATIONAL DISPATCH.

It looks like this:

Does it really mean that there is a problem if the package still shows such status on November 18? Not really. This is pretty common. All it means is that nobody scanned the package after arrival to the foreign country. Most likely the package is already at the customs or local post office. And will be delivered soon to the customer.