I moved into my current house 20 years ago. Back then the internet wasn’t all-pervasive like today and I remember sending letters and making phone calls to various organisations informing them of my new address.
I had no need to set up a mail redirection as I’d lived with my parents before and any post that turned up there was kept for me.
My wife and I are now talking about moving home next year. I’ve had postcards taking up to 229 days to reach me. That’s quite a window!
So how do you catch all those cards slowly winging their way to you? Rely purely on a mail redirection service (surely some items slip through the net)? Perhaps leave stamped envelopes with new occupants, hoping they will forward stray cards to you?
I moved two weeks ago (August 20th). I set my account to inactive in March and have paid to have mail forwarded for the next year + agreed with the new owners that they will contact me about any mail for me delivered to them.
Also, when you change your address in Postcrossing, you can choose to have all cards currently travelling to you automatically registered. You may not receive them all, but that way they all get registered (= good for the senders).
When I moved in 2016, I set my account inactive 2 months prior and had mail redirection for a year, too. I got very few cards redirected to me, and to be honest very few cards arrived in the last weeks before moving. I think this is safe enough.
I set my account to inactive a few month before I had my new keys, from that moment I set my account active again, though I haven’t moved yet… but I was able to empty the new mailbox I had my mail forwarded for 6 month after the move, but got later items delivered to my new address, too.
I moved at least 3 times since joining postcrossing. I always go inactive a couple of months before. I have no way to know if any stray postcards arrived after I left an address, I would venture to say it wouldn’t be more than 1 or 2 over the 3 moves, if it happened at all. I looked into mail redirecting but it wasn’t cheap and didn’t seem worth it since going inactive seemed sufficient as I hadn’t received that many long-travelling card anyway (pre-pandemic…).
I have moved house 8 times since joining postcrossing 13 years ago, once across the Atlantic.
I almost all cases, I used the (inexpensive/free) forwarding service provided by the respective mail service. But not a lot of cards ended up having to be forwarded because (as others said), I also set my account inactive about two months before moving. (Inactive means you are still allowed to send cards, but you won’t receive any.)
And last but not least, postcrossing now offers to automatically register all cards traveling to you when you change your address. That would make the forwarding service obsolete (esp. when it’s usually not cheap).
But I would always make my account inactive at least six weeks before my move to make travel times more realistic upon automatic registration (or you might end up with a card traveling to you from China in a day).
I had my mail forwarded for 6 month after the move, but got later items delivered to my new address, too.