Same for me. With repeated countries option I mostly get Germany, Russia and Usa. That can be slow, but in the end most cards arrive
3 Likes
I wonder if anyone on the Postcrossing team has even seen this topic, and could perhaps reply?
The people getting blocked are generally those who have successfully sent 100s or even 1,000s of postcards. I doubt theyâve all suddenly become picky about where they send postcards to. Iâm sure most, if not all these, have sent every postcard they should have done.
The worldâs mail system seems to have changed dramatically recently, and not in a good way. So many people, myself included, are finding things incredibly slow, with far fewer of my travelling postcards being registered.
I would love to know if @paulo and @meiadeleite are monitoring whatâs happening. And, bearing in mind what is happening, maybe the criteria for people being blocked needs to change?
32 Likes
Iâm from China,last summer I sent five postcards to Europe and America ,only three of them have been received, two of them are still traveling 
It has been 200 days!
Besides ,all of the postcards that I have received were from Russia and Belarus. I donât know why.China has already opened its customs.
3 Likes
Iâm fairly new to Postcrossing and was already blocked twice - once for my sent cards being lost and expired, and next time for not receiving cards, which is both times were ridiculous and frustrating, because it apparently wasnât my fault.
How could I know where exactly all these cards dissappear? We would never find out. I still visit my old post office once a month asking them if thereâs any mail arrived for me, but thatâs just it.
3 Likes
@Berry_i , i messaged several postcrosser to inquire if they had received my postcards. Only one answered, begrudgingly to let me know that she had health issues that needed her attention. Fair enough. However, you have the postcard in your hands, it was mailed to you, why wait almost a year to register it, and only after you received a gentle reminder?
I understand that theyâre circumstances that hinder the smooth flow of postcrossing (war and underdeveloped postal systems) but a little kindness and politeness do make a great difference.
6 Likes
Thereâs some confusion in this topic: some people are talking about being blocked because many postcards sent to them donât arrive, others being blocked because postcards theyâre sending have not arrived to a specific country, and even some that have mentioned being blocked but are actually not blocked⌠
What weâre talking about here is expired postcards, which is one of the things postcrossers complain about the most to us. No one likes postcards that expire, right? Itâs super frustrating when our postcards donât arrive to their destinations or when those sent to us donât arrive.
We do not have an infinite amount of resources at Postcrossing to go check what happened to every single postcard that expired⌠ultimately, weâre just sitting here behind our keyboards, and we donât know what is happening in the mail or in peopleâs lives. But we do have statistics and algorithms! 
With the amount of postcards sent around the world every day, we have a relatively good idea of what is happening in every country, which mail routes have problems, what are normal expiration rates for an account in a given country, etc. So, we use this data to try to automatically spot anomalies, and prevent issues from escalating further. Sometimes this means blocking routes between countries when the problems are at a national level, but sometimes the problems really are specific to a specific account â and in that case, that account should be temporarily blocked, so things can be looked into.
Imagine everyone in your town receives postcards regularly⌠except you. Twenty postcrossers sent you their postcards, and you got just a couple of them. 
Should we continue to let you use the website as usual, or is it perhaps better that you have a look into this issue first?
It really gives us no pleasure to block accounts⌠but we also need to think about all the people affected when a single account has issues receiving or sending mail. Itâs because of having these automatic blocks in place that weâve managed to steadily bring expiration rates down over the years. Itâs not a 100% reliable system, but weâre constantly monitoring and tweaking it with new data, and also using the feedback we receive from the community.
In the end, we want postcrossers to be able to receive and enjoy the postcards sent to them, and likewise, we want for their sent postcards to arrive and be enjoyed. This is what Postcrossing is all about!
42 Likes
(One out of several (is that like 4-6?) is good 
) Perhaps this person thought this one arrived card doesnât matter. I think itâs very kind of them to register it when reminded <3 health issues sometimes make you look at the world so differently, registering one card can seem like it canât have any importanse. To me this person seems friendly and polite, taking the time to answer you, tell about the situation and reasons, and register the card.
To me this shows itâs worth contacting the expired card receivers, if they seem active 
(and if the expired ones are the reason for being blocked).
2 Likes
Thanks very much for the explanation.
I donât understand why you should punish the sender of expired postcardsâŚ
2 Likes
Thanks for the explanation!
Is there guidance on the steps that a blocked account can take to relieve any potential issues? Itâs seems a lot of peopleâs frustrations is that they feel like theyâve been blocked for things that are not their fault, so if there were a series of guidelines about things to be checked that might help?
8 Likes
Hm, I might not be able to know the problem if postcards donât arrive at my place. I would ask myself if my address is difficult to find by mail carriers in general, or if the postal service is unreliable in my area.
However, if my sent postcards donât arrive, personally I would ask myself (and be worried) that my handwriting was too sloppy making the recipientâs address unreadable or too difficult to decipher. 
But that is just me, because my (!) handwriting can be horrible at times, therefore I do my best to write addresses carefully on postcards.
Otherwise, I am at witâs end how to solve the issue. 
2 Likes
I suppose itâs especially because of such cases where the sender doesnât send the card at all and/or when the member chooses to what addresses they send a card. The block prevents doing this too long.
And of course if the mail doesnât work, even when itâs not the senderâs fault, it would be strange to allow a person keep sending when their cards doesnât arrive.
In your case I admit it was just the China being slow. There isnât much one can do, and I thought because of that one would only get one/two addresses there.
5 Likes
Thatâs not very many expired cards? I have ten expired cards, three from last February to Russia. But I am not blocked.
Now I have learned being blocked is a possibility for ten cards, and it makes me worry 
because it seems a little arbitrary.
A couple of my expired cards were sent to members who have not logged on in months, maybe they are not participating anymore. They have not responded to my gentle message asking about the card. I have no control over that.
I even send a second card to each of my expired card recipients after several months pass, in case the first card is lost, but still a couple members still do not log on to the website.
5 Likes
Ive tried resending where people look active- its worked a couple times. I have one lady who is active but only registers cards in batches approx every two months. That one is frustrating.
7 Likes
Tell me about it. Iâve had more unregistered cards to this sort of account than any other. Which seriously makes me think they receive the card but have lost it before they get round to registering it. 
3 Likes
Thereâs got to be more to it than the number expired. Earlier this month, I had 17 expired, and Iâve not been blocked.
6 Likes
I think this has been earlier discussed, and then the advice was to let the postcrossing team know about this registering pattern (if itâs not normal for other members in that country and they get the mail more frequently than every other month). This type of delayed registering always makes some cards expired. The team can ask the person to register the cards more often or then go inactive, if they canât register sooner.
3 Likes
Interesting. Thank you. It hadnât occurred to me to do this, but I will in the future.
2 Likes
I think most cards do arrive. I had one German person register an expired card explaining that she had been ill. I wrote to another American member when expiry was approaching. She agreed to look again, realizing that she had failed to register the card when it arrived weeks earlier.
The times I have re-sent another card to replace an expired one, the active members have registered those in the time frame expected.
3 Likes
Ultimately you are overwhelming the system, so you naturally need to pause.
Isnât this project about developing patience, just imagine you are at the beginning with only Five postcards!
3 Likes