Sure, but it is not part of the address. But then it never really occurred to me to print it, I know it’s handy for some people but I see mail as something handwritten, I don’t even own a printer. And being paranoid as I am about mail getting lost, I think the address should be as clear and undisturbed as possible and I found it strange that not everybody feels the same.
Also yes, I can see many print it with the address, but when it is handwritten below the address, and it really does look like a postal code, I do wonder if it is people that are very new to mail and weren’t around when mail was a common everyday thing…
And yes even long-term members do it, I guess they have been lucky all along. So much of my mail gets lost even with my best efforts to write the address clearly and without stuff around it…
It is for me, as I said above when I deal with mail I am always so so worried about it getting lost, always have been ever since I had penpals 20, 25 years ago.
I don’t think it’s paranoid.
I’m pen-palling for ~ 30 years now and too much mail (also inside Germany with the good old Deutsche Post ) got lost (or even stolen) over all these years.
I’m half Italian and when I sent mail from Italy it was always a bit…well, a lot of mail got lost or reached its goal after a long time. Though it got better nowadays, I had a lot of “fun” with Poste Italiane in the past and you could hear my curses all over the little village
I always print the address to countries where it could be a problem to read certain letters or digits.
My handwriting can be a problem, depending on my daily form with my arthrosis.
On the other hand I’m wondering that some mail reached me as I could hardly decipher the handwriting. I have two (German) pen-pals with such a handwriting and I think at Deutsche Post they must have graphologists Meanwhile one of these pals always asks for labels with my address
Did you read my profile or is it just a coincidence that good old Poste Italiane has traumatised us about mail?
Though currently SingPost is making me feel the same, I have 9 expired postcards and for the whole of last year I had like 10-11… And I don’t send thaaat much. I don’t know if it’s only the pandemic or it would be like this anyway.
I have a card that’s about to expire. I’ve seen some people listing ‘resends’ in their profile- if my card expires and I resend and it eventually gets there and is registered will take take it out of ‘expired’ status? Or how do people know when to resend to get it there in time before it expires?
Thanks!
Thanks Jarana, they are still active and active quite regularly so maybe it’s delayed or maybe it’s lost in the post. (My secret fear is they didn’t like it so didn’t register it!!)
As has already been mentioned, we might never know the reason why a postcard hasn’t been registered. But recently, a couple of my expired cards were registered. In one case, the poor person had been ill with Covid, and only just felt well enough to get back in to Postcrossing. I’m sure this must be the reason for a lot of our expired cards this year.
I would venture to say that most people don’t resend (I’m sure there’s a thread about it somewhere). I don’t - I’ve done it only twice in my 5 years of postcrossing. The idea is to send a card, if it doesn’t make it, that sucks, but that’s life. Some cards are registered even after 200, 300 days (max. 365, then they are removed from the system), some don’t but it’s part of the gamble of sending a piece of paper on a worldwide travel.
Good to know that most people don’t resend. I just happened to come across a few mentions of resending. My first card will (likely) expire tomorrow. It’s going to Ukraine so there’s a chance it’s just slow. It’s good to know they can still be registered for a year. Thanks for getting back to me @elikoa
It cannot be that someone does not register a card because they do not like it.
Because when we send a card, the sender thinks something about it. (I hope)
You never know whether the recipient will like it. But then one should be polite enough to register the card. And if you just writes… .Hello, thank you….
Because that’s the point of postcrossing.
But I think that right now more cards will expire than usual.
I can live with that. And I never send a second card.
As @elikoa noted: That is a part of the game
Yes, I do sometimes, in fact I’ve done it in the last month with Germany & the US - 2 countries that I almost never have trouble with, but I think the Delta wave is disrupting the mail a fair bit now.
I would rarely do it with China or Russia given the length of time cards take to travel there & the fact that for both of those countries for me, sadly they have my most expired cards.
I only log in when I receive a postcard to register and when I ask for my maximum of addresses. If possible once a month all of the number addresses available and even taking time to make costume handmade postcards if I have an address where I can send a handmade postcard. That takes a bit more time, but I really like to take the effort of making something special for someone!
So, I don’t resend - never thought about that option either…and I really don’t know how many expired postcards I have till now…My balance of sent and received postcards are nearly the same…Is that an indication?
Last time I got my postcards addresses was the 11th of September. Till now 6 postcards arrived and 8 are traveling. By mistake I wrote a postcard to the only expired address I have - while all written with stamps I decided to send the postcard anyway. Checking now - the person only sent 28 postcards since 2013 and logged in the last time 6 months ago…
Ghostcrosser…?!
In the 1.5 years I’ve been in Postcrossing, I have mailed out 270 cards (not including the forums). Of those, only five have expired, and four of those were sent between June 4 and July 17 of this year. Has anyone else noticed an increase in expired cards? My expired cards included cards sent to the US and Canada, so distance does not explain it. But this sudden rash of expired cards is dampening my enthusiasm for the site. Any suggestions?
I hope I’m not scaring you with my answer: hide the expired
At the moment I have 32 expired. Mostly from summer. And I believe in two week comes ten more. But this is because there’s something wrong between the mail from Finland to Russia, where most of my cards are going. But there are cards to USA as well, which was very slow at one point.
I have always had expired, and gotten used to it, and I let my self believe, that the cards are somewhere and maybe arrive eventually.
And the happiest thing of course, the card can arrive even after it’s expired
(And of course it can arrive even after that, when it disappears from the list, but then you don’t know it, unless they somehow know who sent it.)
) got lost (or even stolen) over all these years.
Meanwhile one of these pals always asks for labels with my address 
That’s my nemesis 
