Expired Postcards

I just had an expired postcard that was sent to Bucha in Ukraine a few weeks before the war started registered today. Sometimes the postal service is amazing!

15 Likes

All of my Russian postcards have expired :frowning:

I have one to China and one within my own country that are both going to expire soon (the one in my own country surprises me!)

Oh well :laughing:

1 Like

Only one of my cards travelling to Asia has been delivered since the war broke. So yes, looks familiar. :pleading_face:
I’m not expecting my cards to China to be registered any time soon because of the lockdowns there…

1 Like

Yes, I am! I have cards expired or about to expire travelling to China and Taiwan. Also Russia, but that is not that surprising.

I also have the same experience. Several postcards to Russia, China en Taiwan are expired and all those members haven’t logged in for several months.

1 Like

Today I heard from postcrossers, that if you have too much expired cards, your account will get locked. I think that’s really hard and unfair. Postcrossing is such a loose thing and then there is such a pressure that card shouldn’t get expired? You should send a second card or contact the receiver?
I thought postcrossing should be fun and not hard work!

Welcome at the forum @Enthiz
I moved your post to this Topic.

I don’t think that information is correct.

Of course, postcrossing should be fun and you won’t be banned if you have 1 or 2 expired cards. But above a certain amount in relation to the cards you’ve sent, you either have to find out why so many cards are expired or you have to send replacements to users who are still active. There’s nothing unfair about that.

Otherwise, you could simply draw addresses but not write cards and still receive cards. And that is unfair.

I don’t think anyone is required to send a second card.

The people who would have an issue with so many expired cards would be those who are drawing addresses but not actually sending them or who have an extremely poor mail system that’s not suitable for PC. The average user really doesn’t have to worry about this.

I thought you only receive a card for one marked as arrived? Expired ones don’t earn a new card fur the sender do they?

1 Like

Hahaha, you’re absolutely right - I was thinking completely the wrong way round.

Assuming the OP is in Germany (send and receive from Germany) it’s probably unlikely she’ll have her account locked from too many expired cards sent :laughing: . Because the reliability of German post, and with assumption the cards will travel more within Europe with less chance of cards getting lost and getting expired

I don’t know about locked account of the sender because of many expired sent postcard, but if many cards going to you are expired (as receiver), the account will be locked. I’ve read some of Indonesian postcrossers have their accounts locked because many of cards going to them are expired

I think having this mechanism is great under normal circumstances (without pandemic and restrictions), but to impose it during the pandemic (with higher chance cards getting expired and lost), could be bad… especially in countries without reliable postal service

I also don’t know the limit of expired cards that makes an account getting locked too~
I think the account will be locked if you’re the reciever with many cards going to you are expired, the sender probably won’t have their account locked because of many expired cards (cmiiw)

6 Likes

This has been my understanding too.

That wrote Vicky/mundoo in the old forum:

If someone receives such an automatic notification, they should contact the Support immediately, if they have all cards sent and all received cards are registered.

1 Like

I think it can work both ways.

The sender might not be sending the cards for the addresses they have drawn and thus have a large number of expired cards.

The receiver might not be registering the cards they receive and thus also have a large number of expired cards on the way to them.

In both cases, something is wrong somewhere and so, account will be locked by the system and the person affected needs to contact the admins.

4 Likes

Of course this can happen too. It happened to me once. I guess it was in the beginning of the covid pandemic when the mail delivery systems got messy. I sent second cards to active members, they arrived and my account was unlocked.

2 Likes

I have had up to 11 expired cards at the same time. Often I have more expired cards in my list than cards under 60 days (right now, I have 7 “travelling” and 7 “expired”, but two of those “travelling” will become “expired” in a few days, so it will be 9 vs 5). But I never got blocked. So I think it has to be really bad before that happens.

1 Like

That’s encouraging to hear. I’ve got three expiring this week. One to China, not so surprising. But the other two are to active Postcrossers in Germany, which is.

I also have two travelling to Germany. One did expire and the other one is about to. That surprises me too as cards to Germany usually gets registered within a week.

2 Likes