I’ve joined postcrossing in February 2020, sent two cards, and soon afterwards I had to go inactive because I couldn’t receive mail because of the pandemic (long story). After a while they (and another one I tried to send later that year) were received and registered.
This year, in late July / early August I set the account back to active, and resumed sending cards: all of the ones I’ve sent since then have been received (during September), but I haven’t received anything yet.
I’m in Italy, so I don’t believe I’m in one of the top sending countries where I should expect my address to have to wait some time before being given out, so I believe that if my address has been assigned when I came back from inactive, all those three cards should get expired around these days.
I’m starting to worry that I’m having issues receiving mail, and that I’m causing expired cards for the senders, which would be pretty sad.
OTOH, if the old ones don’t matter anymore, and I have to expect my address to be assigned only after my new cards have been received, the earliest that has happened is 10/Sep/2022, and thus there is still plenty of time for a card to arrive.
Should I stop worrying? or should I try to send myself a card when I’m in the next town, to check whether I’m actually able to receive mail?
I think you should get the postcards to, but maybe you can contact Postcrossing. I think they can help you and see if your address is really given out or not.
Were your old cards received BEFORE you went inactive or AFTER? If after, then your address, also for the old cards, went out only when you went active again, so on September 10th.
You should receive some cards soon, but I wouldn’t worry yet
EDIT: I misunderstood - you went active again in early August, so yeah, that’s a bit long to wait…
Unfortunately, I misunderstood your first post - I thought you went back to active on Sep 10th, and in reality, you went back to active in July or August - your address should have gone out then for the 3 cards from 2020, so it’s a bit long to wait.
Still, your address might have been drawn exclusively by people from countries with slow mail, so it’s possible the cards are on their way to you, only very slowly. In any case, you should receive something soon.
I would say check for certain that you are on active again. I once thought that I put it back to active and I didn’t.
Check your address again and see if everything is filled in correctly of course
And yeah, patience, it sucks but some countries take longer, unfortunately.
All postcards you send you will get back and they make up for the difference. But if you haven’t received anything yet I would certainly check if your account is really on active and check if your address is right.
If there is a problem in the building, is it possible for you to get a P.O Box? I once had it before as well when I lived in a house where the post was missing all the time, so I let all my post go to the post box in the postoffice. Although I have no idea what the costs would be in your country for it.
possible, yes. cheap, not really. And since bills and official things arrive through other means, I would have to justify the expense purely as a hobby thing
And I’ve just (well, a couple of days ago) received two, both sent when the first one of this year had arrived, plus my test postcard (which arrived in record time).
I don’t know if there’s something similar in Italy but in Germany there’s an organization which is testing the postal service with fake letters etc.
You have to subscribe to a website and they send to you letters, advertisement, newspapers etc. Every single of them have a code which you have to register on the website with date of arrival and condition of the mail.
If they discover irregularities they contact the responsible persons at the postal service and help to clear the issues. When I and some neighbours took part some years ago it worked (I guess I have to do it again ).
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