I am a teacher from Belgium and have sent out cards with my 23 pupils on October 6th. Of these 23, 16 have arrived so far. (Yes, I am keeping a close track) Russia and Belarus take a long time and there are also some cards that have not arrived yet in the USA and Chech Republic. But now, only 4 of my pupils have already received a card back. That seems like very little.
Are we too impatient or has the system changed? Last year we received a lot of cards and quite soon too. Or have we been spoiled then?
Do you and your 23 students all have separate Postcrossing accounts?
I can understand where your students may be impatient to receive their cards.
I would be happy to send some postcards if you pm the information.
You need to be patient. Depending on which country the cards are coming from, it may take some time. It feels like the postal service in general has slowed down.
USPS seemed to have had some slowdowns from Europe around the time of World Postcard Day. I got a bunch of cards from Europe which were postmarked between Sept. 30th and Oct. 5th after Nov. 10th. I’m not sure if USPS had trouble finding me or my state, or if there was a problem with customs or something.
A package I received from Canada during this time was almost destroyed by the Customs inspectors, even though it was fabric for embroidery, and embroidery kits from London arrived delayed as well. The package was opened by Customs but undamaged. Even some fan art postcards I ordered from Australia were inspected and delayed. I’m not sure what’s going on - the total of my purchases was well under what I’m allowed to order from abroad in that time period. (US $800 per person for non-commercial use per month, last I checked)
My impression is in the last 6 months especially, mail generally has been slow - it may be because workers are off sick with COVID etc.
The length of travel time for your cards would also depend on where they are coming from.
As you already noted cards from Russia or Belarus can take more time & if any were coming from China, Taiwan, Indonesia or India they might take quite a while as well. I find cards from the US seem to go missing more often in the last year (perhaps due to service cuts) & can take quite a while travelling & I’m saying that coming from Canada.
A bit more patience for the US cards, both to and from. Maybe your students will receive more cards in the first and second weeks of December. For me, from where I live in the US, mail to Belgium take 3-5 weeks. What a great project! Hope they enjoy, despite the wait
I’m sure you probably thought of this if you’re doing it as an assignment, but you could put up the maps of the remaining places - the km distance might help explain to students why it’s taking longer?
I believe that patience is one of the virtues in Postcrossing and snail mail. Postal ways are slow, at least slower than emails. Sometimes it doesn’t even work at all.
As a teacher myself, i prefer sending the cards to another school rather than through postcrossing. Although the teacher can be found thank to this site. I do not need to explain you that a secondary school has precise time schedules, so it’s kinda difficult when some pupils have had their response and others not.
On the other hand, sending to another school also reassures the parents as it’s not some random person. We have to consider that people are not always fond of postcrossing and some even distrust the idea.
Still, i think that such projects are always a good thing for pupils, as they will open up to the world and discover new opportunities.
I’ve been with Postcrossing since September 30th and haven’t received a single card yet.
my mother registered a week later and has already received 7 cards.
The Postcrossing system hasn’t changed, but there are always small changes in the mail systems, many of which are invisible to us mere mortals! Did you do it at the same time of year last year? This is always a slow time because of Christmas (although last year I was pleasantly surprised that mail didn’t seem to really slow down like usual… this year we are definitely back to the normal slow rate though).
I actually have an official card to Belgium that is about to expire — I’m surprised because I thought it would be like all my other mail to Europe (+/- 30 days). In your case, I do think you’re being a bit impatient expecting people to have their return cards when it hasn’t even been 2 months since the first cards were sent, unfortunately. I’m sure the vast majority will show up eventually
Esp @take76 and @DavinaBriers, but also general reminder: it’s not the days you sent the card that count, but the days they are registered. (That’s when your adress jumps into the pool to be drawn)
(so if most of your cards were registered in November, the ‘answer’-cards have started then and are probably on their way already, but still)
During the last year I noticed two facts (concerning only MY outgoing postcards, may be you cannot generalize)
Postcards in general seem to travel a bit longer in average
I had more expired cards than before. Especially cards to China often never got registrated, as well as about one third of my cards to Russia. Ukraine is very much unrelyable, too, for obvious reasons. But there were also other cards which just disappeared for ever, e.g. to Italy, Great Britain, even to my own country.
In my first year of postcrossing I had about 3% cards expired. Meanwhile it’s a lot more, stopped counting.
For me personally, I found the error.
Thanks to a very kind, attentive fellow crosser!
I had entered the wrong house number.
Of course this wasn’t the case for you!
No, we have given up on that in the first year of secondary education. They are 11 / 12 / 13 and often not capable to manage a personal account. I have 4 ‘class accounts’ that I use to send the cards from. We’ll just have to wait some more then.
The holidays are upon us. Mail gets heavier this time of year. Plus, we have some wars going on that can slow down the traffic of mail. This hobby requires an enormous amount of patience. This is a good lesson for your pupils to learn. Good things take time. This is snail mail. You and your students will not get the immediate gratification that you get with social media. In the grand scheme of things, October 6th really isn’t that long ago. These things take time.
I live in the US and have noticed that postcards to me are taking forever! I went out to another city and sent myself a postcard from my trip on October 19th. I even went to the post office and handed the card to a very nice clerk who hand cancelled it for me.
It took 32 days for the card to travel 243 miles / 391 km within my state, although I have to give USPS credit - it arrived in perfect condition, with only the bar code, and even that in the perfect place, not damaging the National Park Service Passport Stamp - an ink stamp like you get when you enter a country that I put in the message area to remind me of my visit.
International cards are taking 30+ days to get to me.
