Got mail from Lithuania lately?

So it won’t be possible to avoid the stamp covering by using an envelope :frowning:

A postcard sent from Lithuania to Europe costs respectively: normal mail - 0,75 EUR, priority mail - 0,81 EUR and registered mail (only priority shipping is possible) - 2,84 EUR. The difference is very significant, so either the Lithuanian postal workers are instructed to persuade customers to buy more expensive products, or (but this theory is less probable) the Lithuanian postcrossing users are fed up with postcards disappearing somewhere without a trace… and without registration by the recipients…

2 Likes

Seems like they’re doing this to priority mail now, as mine has a €0.81 stamp on it! To be fair, it arrived within just 2 days in Germany, so it seems to work very very well!

I think we are on the trail of solving this mystery: if I had to pay only additional 0.06 EUR for sending postcards as registered, I would do it with all my cards sent as part of postcrossing ;o)

1 Like

I wouldn’t - it’s a pain for most people having to go to the post office to retrieve your mail, since many people aren’t at home when the mail arrives. I never considered Lithuania a country with erratic mail service, postcards usually arrived safely and quickly, so I’m not sure I understand why the Lithuanian post thinks this is necessary.

I haven’t received a card from Lithuania for a month, but as someone who is interested in stamps, I’m already dreading receiving my next cards from there with stickers covering them up …

3 Likes

Hello! A Lithuanian here. Our post recently introduced a change in our postal system - all mail, including postcards, will become “automated”, which means that these stickers that look like registered mail (but are not, in fact, registered - we don’t pay for it, nor can we track it) will be put on all postcards and letters. In the barcode of the stickers information such as a recipient’s country, address and etc is contained, so that the machines can sort the postcards faster and easier - this is supposed to speed up our mail services. However, currently it is not very well organized - different post offices interpret these changes differently, so often various problems occur. Apparently this change confuses other countries’ postal workers as well (as it was mentioned here by some German postcrossers - you absolutely should not have to go to the post office to get our card sent to you!) - all Lithuanian postcrossers are upset with this change and I’m pretty sure they regret if it caused any problems for any of the recipients (we also know that some postcards get ruined when they put the sticker on the front side of the card, despite many of us leaving enough space for it on the written side!). It’s all new and looks like both the post offices and senders are confused and upset. For now, the stickers are put only on the mail that we send and not on the cards we receive but it’s only a question of time whether even more changes will take place. Also, take note that it’s very possible that not all people are familiar with these changes - the official statement released by the post was seen as very unclear and misleading by many. Some probably haven’t even heard of it and don’t leave space for the sticker and just drop their fully written cards into the postal boxes, which leads to post stamps getting covered and so on.

29 Likes

Thank you so much for clarifying! I hope everybody gets accustomed to it soon. The registered mail stickers are stuck on it by Deutsche Post definitely, so that’s not Lithuanian Post’s fault. I think our postal service just doesn’t know that just because it has a barcode, it’s not registered mail. I hope they’ll learn about it soon, having to pick up postcards at the post office is really inconvenient.

2 Likes

I haven’t received any postcards from Lithuania since August. I hope that the Lithuanian post will learn to put the stickers next to the stamp, not over it, and that the Italian post won’t get as confused as the German post… I’ll let you know when I receive one.
Some years ago, we had a big problem in Italy with postcards coming from the Netherlands: they were delivered by the private mail carrier Nexive (belonging to PostNL) and always had a big sticker covering the stamps. Many of us complained on Nexive’s Facebook page, but they claimed these stickers were necessary for their postmen and -women not to “get confused”. Anyway, it looks like this has changed in the last couple of years, so I hope this issue with Lithuanian postcards will be solved, too! :slight_smile:

1 Like

I wouldn’t - it’s a pain for most people having to go to the post office to retrieve your mail, since many people aren’t at home when the mail arrives. I never considered Lithuania a country with erratic mail service, postcards usually arrived safely and quickly, so I’m not sure I understand why the Lithuanian post thinks this is necessary

yes, you are right: it is painful to go to the post office and pick up an ordinary postcard from there, but … for me it is also very painful that many of my postcards do not reach the recipients (or maybe some users do not bother to register them ) and I do not have any evidence for postcrossing service support that I have fulfilled my obligation - but even so I will not receive anything in return, although the fault is the postal system or the carefree recipient of my card…
All the above considerations are, of course, pure theory, because the price of registered mail, both in Poland 18,90 PLN (4,20 EUR) and in Germany 3,50 EUR (yes, Poland is the winner in this competition ;o(, is an effective barrier against their implementation; o)

Thank you for the explanations - so it is just another step towards “Automatic for the people” … I only hope that the Lithuanian Post will not recognize soon that these stickers are better than stamps, which can be completely eliminated in the future (in Poland we have already the first signal of such process: from February 2021 it will not be possible to pay for registered mail by stamps - they will be replaced by printed stickers)

1 Like

Mine were just put in my mailbox, despite the label (added by German Post) says registered.

just wondering, if it could make a difference, if people from abroad complain directly to latvian post’s customer service telling them, how their new stickers are misinterpreted by other postal services? :thinking:

edit: i ment the lithuanian post, of course!! :blush:

2 Likes

It’s the Lithuanian post anyway, not the Latvian post. :wink: :wink:

1 Like

@siobhan
thanks for pointing it out.

i edited it!

I got a card from Lithuania today that had no barcode at all on it. :+1:t2:

I received postcard LT-743608 today. It had both a barcode XA004419107LT and stamps. The barcode was scanned when the card passed through a sorting machine, but was not recognized or scanned at my local Post Office, and the card was in with the rest of my mail.

Hello. Thanks for writing about this. I was thinking to write about the same thing. Could You please write this information in a separate post (not only as a comment) so that more postcrossers see it?

I received a LT card yesterday that had been mailed 11/2. I’m in the USA, and it was delivered to my house just like normal. The barcode was placed at the bottom of the card over the blue priority mail sticker. The stamp was canceled. I think the transit time was very good!

1 Like

Thank You for sharing :slight_smile:

This week I received a card from Lithuania without the barcode sticker. However, a few weeks before I had got one with the sticker. So I’m wondering if there’s any logic behind it.