Postcrossing frowns and discourages on this practice as it is defrauding the via country of the postage.
The only way we accept it is if you also put the other country’s stamp on the mail as well as the sending country one. So AU stamp to the via country, and then their stamp to RU.
So from Russia via Germany it would need a RU stamp and a DE stamp of the correct values.
Vicki
Postcrossing Team
Did you include the stamp of the Via country as well?
Vicki
Postcrossing Team
Did you also include a valid German stamp postage from Germany to Russia as well as Australian postage to Germany?
Vicki
Postcrossing Team
I also recently successfully sent a card to Reunion, and later saw that it’s actually on the suspended list (I didn’t even think to check before sending because it’s a French island and uses French stamps). But my card arrived and pretty quickly!
I’d never thought about it this way to be honest.
In any case we are just wondering if writing “via Germany” works. No German stamps added.
No, I didn’t know I had to. I tried googling and searching the forum and the closest I got to finding any info was references to a topic entitled “Sending mail to a destination via another country” which has been deleted.
My envelope doesn’t have any stamps at all because it’s one of the AusPost international prepaid ones. The person I’m swapping with suggested trying it since we’re also trialling sending letters through a third person, and I don’t think they were aware of having to add a German stamp either, since when I asked if all I have to do is add “via Germany” below the address they said yes.
Honestly, I don’t have great enough knowledge of how the postal systems interact with each out and I assumed that mail regularly passed through other countries enough that there would’ve been some sort of monetary agreements in place to cover for that and didn’t consider that it could be defrauding.
Is there any way to get that information somewhere more prominent? I’ve see people ask how to send via another country a few times now on the forum but never see an answer, and it’d be especially important to have an easy way to find this information if it’s something Postcrossing discourages. I know it’s not something that could ever happen officially because of the limits based on the postal monitor, but I see people talk about it enough on the forums to warrant some sort of way to find this information easily on the forum.
Is there an easy way to get German stamps in Australia or would I have to swap for some with a German Postcrosser? I tried googling and I think I found the right rate I need but I can’t find any of that stamp. There were some stamps on ebay but none were the right rate and they were mostly old and therefore expensive stamps with marked up postage. If there’s a message put out about posting via another country it would be handy to know what stamps we’re supposed to use for the via countries and where we can get them.
As far as I’m aware, there’s no simple way to get German stamps (at a good rate). I’m having an order sent to a German friend and they’ll forward it to me. The postcard rate is €0,95 for reference.
You can order UN stamps or Netherlands stamps more easily (also send to Russia), but the rates are higher.
Edit: Also, you can order UK stamps directly from the Royal Mail website (also send to Russia) but their postage rate is even more painful than ours (£2.50).
Ahhh, thank you! From what I found I thought the rate was €0,90 so I was close but would’ve still been short, haha. So would sending via the Netherlands to Russia also be an option? And does it take a while for the stamps to arrive? (I don’t wanna think about the UK postage rate, haha)
I’m having a quick look at the postNL website and they have something called a postage stamp code where you pay for it and then just write it on the envelope, I wonder if that’d work? If it would that’d be easy.
Oh yes actually now I remember that Germany does that too (with print-at-home stamps)! (And would be cheaper and faster than NL.)
There are some more discussions in this thread.
Thank you, you’ve been super helpful! And that thread was awesome, it’s a shame it’s unlisted especially when the second last post explains so much on how to do it with the correct stamps. Thank you for sharing!
I’m glad it was helpful! You know what — I have also just realised that NZ is probably an option! I don’t know how their rates compare but I believe they’re recently resumed mail to Russia and you can definitely order stamps (and prepaid maxis) from NZ Post online and my last order arrived within a couple of weeks. (Also, they do a loyalty program that you can redeem for free stamps!! We are seriously missing out with AusPost 
)
Perhaps you could consider using Malaysia as well. Their postage is 90sen internationally (converts to 0.29 AUD) and they do send to Russia
Personally what I might do if I have items to send to Russia is mail them in an envelope to a Malaysian friend. The items will have Malaysian stamps on them, all I need my friend to do is to remove the items from the envelope and drop the cards off in the mailbox