People who haven't logged in for a long time

Oh really? I was always under the impression that it was.

I think the balance generally evens out though, I have 5 expired cards since January but I still have more recieved cards than sent. I have never noticed that my sent number was out of balance due to expired cards.

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It’s true that you don’t as explained in the post above, but to me the waste is in the time and effort and money put in the card to someone. Same if I send a card to a friend and it gets lost. So I find it a bit sad, but there is nothing to do about it so I just don’t think about it too much…

I’m also not in favour. They get auto-registered if a profile is deleted, and then they look like any postcard that truly arrived. Maybe they did, but they weren’t registered.

In fact, I like to think that most of them arrived, just they weren’t registered. That makes me feel better than cards that truly never arrived to their destination because they were lost in the post.

There is nothing to do and nothing to worry about :slight_smile: It’s just something that happens. I have 8 expired cards right now, 3 to members that haven’t logged in in months. It’s just normal, even if frustrating.

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Nothing really. I guess these people log in when they do. As sad as it sounds, just let it expire and move in.

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I think this too, because in my experience, mail is very rarely totally lost.
They just don’t have time to register, or interest, they think they registered it, put it somewhere and forgot. Something like that.

I just recently received a card from USA that travelled 256 days. I don’t know if it was a second card or the “original”.

I have 17 expired between 60 - 356 days travelling time.
6 of them has not been here for 3 month - 1 year, which I consider “lost”
Only one has empty profile.
8 is going to the USA
7 to the Russia
1 to Germany
and 1 to Taiwan

So 11 are still active members, and I hope the cards arrive.

Interestingly I have 2627 sent, and same amount received! I wonder if there are as many expired to me (but I don’t want to know).

I know at least one is travelling to me, because the sender asked already.

Even though it’s not nice to have the expired ones in the list, I somehow feel extra happy, when I get a Hurray from an expired card :slight_smile:

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I have to disagree with this because since the pandemic started, the amount of stuff that never made it anywhere is absolutely insane :frowning:

Even before, it wasn’t that rare (depending also on the countries involved).

But when people never come back to postcrossing, I think in a lot of cases they must have received it.

I also love when a long-expired card is registered! But get a bit sad when a card drops off the system after 365 days - I had one of those last week (to a very active member so truly lost. Very annoying, I considered sending a second one but in the end I didn’t).

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Last year here it was in every newspaper:
A card from Italy to Germany arrived after 51 years!

(readable for German speakers only)
(it was not a poscrossing card, of course)

Could be stuff for some book: “adventures of a postcard” (or something like) :grinning:

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My 2021 ghostcrosser experience

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Postcrossing was created in 2005 - of course there are profiles of members who began but quit again. If I ever take a pause from Postcrossing, I would be devastated if my profile and my beloved wall was deleted just because I didn’t log in for some time. :anguished:

Of course 10 years of inactivity are a long time, but still… Why should I be bothered by old non-active profiles? They won’t get my address, I don’t interact with them.

Besides, it just happens that cards get in between the process of someone quitting. That’s part of the game…

I’ve just counted my expired cards: 7 out of 20 belong to members who didn’t log in for months. Only three are “newbies” with just a few sent / recieved cards. Everyone has filled out the profile.

Nobody knows why some users didn’t log in anymore - because they lost interest, or because life got in between? As I said, it’s part of the game. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I agree. I would hate if they deleted accounts when inactive. I started postcrossing in 2007 and was quite active until 2014. I took a long break and recently became active again in December 2020. I would have been very upset if my account had been deleted!

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Definitely don’t want inactive profiles deleted – I’ve had to or wanted to take breaks from PC for various reasons over the years, some fairly long, and yet I’ve always come back and been an active member again.

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In the last year or so, I wrote to several members that came back after years and years and years (effect of the pandemic, I believe, as I didn’t encounter that so often before).
So it makes sense for profiles to stay. People could actually delete them (I mean the owner of the profile deletes it) if they really want to.

And as mentioned, that doesn’t affect sending as they won’t be picked to receive a card. The only problem is that it takes about a month for them to be automatically put inactive (and rightly so, because not logging in for a week or 4 is not that weird if someone is busy or just doesn’t spend time between cards browsing the website or on the forum) so you in that month you could get someone who actually won’t come back. Yep, it sucks, but life and postcrossing go on.

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What about people who would like to return after years and find their account deleted? Do you think they feel welcome any longer?

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Of course you are all right! I didn’t think that far, of course people can start postcrossing again after years and it would be a shame if their previous successes were gone! But there are certainly many profiles that do not come back, but unfortunately it is not possible to tell them apart! Probably it is the newcomers who lose interest and stop after a few cards, what a shame if you send a card to someone like that!

Newbies… that is the risk to take when signing up as a Postcrosser. Too bad, there is no way we can police the newbies to register their cards on time…

Well - we all were newbies at a certain time, weren’t we?
You never can tell if THIS newbie you’re sending a card to is a reliable one or not.
I enjoy writing cards to newbies (as I do to “oldies” as well :grinning:). I remember my newbie time. Each incoming card is SO exciting!
However, I did not have that much lost cards. About 3% I suppose. I believe this is normal.

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Love the “ghostcrossing” word! Here’s my ghostcrossing wall. None have logged in for at least a month, one of them for five months:

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I think that would be unfair for people who do many other things or people who travel, and sometimes because we don’t use social medias and live a very ‘outside life’ with lots of activities we are very busy, so we sometimes don’t check e-mails for two weeks, sometimes more, we just don’t live that ‘online life’.

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Funnily enough, I had the opposite experience today. I registered 4 cards today that were all travelling 138 days…3 of the members haven’t been seen in a couple of months…

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Oh no. I got new address of member whose last log in 28 days ago and never register anything since March. Will this be my 5th ghostcrosser this year? It’s only June :sweat:

Yes, after 7 years I came back, thanks to this pandemic!!! And I am completely hooked on postcrossing now :grin: I went even on Instagram to look for postcrossers active there to swap cards, because postcrossing went to slow. So yes I am really really happy that old postcrossing accounts are not deleted.

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