We do that s lot here in Poland. Whenever we have a chance to send our cards by Deutsche Post rather than Poczta Polska, then that’s what we do. Postage in Germany is only half of that in Poland!
And as long as I send Polish postcards, I think it makes more sense sending them with a Polish ID than with a German one. At least as a receiver, I’d rather have a postcard from Greece among my received cards from Greece than among those from Turkey…
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I wouldn’t mind a touristy card from Turkey (sent from there) with a Greek ID. But I wouldn’t enjoy a Greek touristy card with a Turkish stamp. I wouldn’t mind for non touristy cards at all.
I really don’t like touristy cards with other country’s stamps, but don’t mind the ID (which is just necessary text, but not related to postal parameters like the stamp is).
I am travelling to Thailand. I had plans to draw address here, but worried if I will find cards and more importantly stamps because I will be be specifically visiting any post office. Cards I might still find in souvenir shops at touristy places, as per my research.
My plan was to send Thai cards from India, even if I fail to find stamps in Thailand. I thought, people at least might enjoy reading about my travel experience.
But, reading this thread, I am afraid I am gonna disappoint lot of people, if I end up sending from India 
The card is coming from you, wherever you are to mail it. That is what’s important to me. If I lived near a border, and it was significantly cheaper, I would do the same, I think, to help reduce postage costs.
It’s easy to learn who doesn’t like it here in the forum, but now I’m wondering if some members who receive a card from you might not even notice. Best wishes!
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I usually send from the country connected to the travel ID.
However, not one card from a recent trip to Jordan has made it to the recipients after 90 days (except one registered by PostCrossing because the addressee moved house).
I am considering a second card, but, of course, am not in Jordan any more, nor likely to visit soon.
In this circumstance, a replacement would be sent inside an envelope explaining the reason for the card being mailed from my home country.
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It is not against rules but I know many people don’t like it, they consider it cheating. It is often bring up as an issue in local postcrossing groups I am a member of.
I personally do not care.
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I understand the reason, it makes sense, but could you be in travel mode when you select the address?! I received a card with a European ID, but he happened to be on holiday in Brazil, so the stamp and card didn’t match the country. It confused me initially, but it kind of annoyed me that he didn’t get a Brazilian ID.
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As I started Postcrossing ages ago I said “If I get and sent at least one card to Greece and Ireland I will quit because goal reached”
Ireland is done but I still have never got an official card from Greece (sent now two, that last one mailed today) so although I would see the different stamp as a curiosity on most cards on one from Greece it would actually bother me because the goal just would not feel completed.
(I do have cards from Greece sent from family but that’s also just not the goal 
)
I was forced to do the same in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Luckily (?) the post offices wouldn’t even accept my stamped postcards. They grudgingly cancelled the stamps, I brought them home and sent them out in envelopes from the “land of the free and home of the functioning post office”.
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Ditto Qatar. I sent those from home too, not having found a functioning post office in the 3 days I was there.
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To be able to get the ID of the country you are visiting, you have to set your account in travel mode and be connected to local wifi. Othervise there is no way for Postcrossing to know if anyone is actually in that country.
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Yes, I know that. I was answering the OP’s question that yes it is a bit annoying. The European ID sent from Brazil could have had a Brazilian ID had he just set himself in travel mode.
It would be annoying even for me, that’s why I asked… the main issue I have with travel mode is that I cant have all my cards and stash of nice decoration while travelling and the receiver will get something generic or whatever i have at hand at the moment
In any case the plan of sending from Turkey was abandoned… i sent them on 25th of August and none has arrived. They hadnt checked the box until I ask a Turkish friend to inform them there are a few cards in THAT box that need to be collected!
So, i’ll cut my sent cards and continue sending from greece! My Santa list will only have stamps as a request!
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The travel mode system is set up so that you can only use travel mode with a verifiably local IP address, so using a VPN doesn’t work.
I agree with this and to solve it I do my best to buy some postcards for the country I am visiting ahead of time on eBay or the GF/FOTW/MOTW cards from Postallove and Postcardsmarket, or just design my own postcards for the countries and order them to be printed ahead of time. I also order stamps online ahead of time, when possible. I always look for local tourist postcards while I am in a foreign country, but if I cannot find any then I use the postcards I brought with me.
However, sometimes I don’t plan ahead enough and have to make do with what I have. For example, I sent VA-934 and VA-936 from the Vatican City post office but didn’t have enough Vatican City postcards with me so I had to use postcards from Venice and Pisa instead.
Another thread that shows how difficult it is for some people to understand that some of us live in one country yet commute to another one on a daily basis and that for practical and financial reasons, you may end up with an ID that doesn’t match the stamp.
I am planning to move back to France in a few months and go back to work in a neighbouring country. Would people really prefer me constantly switching to travel mode to get an ID that matches the stamp and buy cards from a country i don’t live in and that i have no connection to other than work, with a message that will reflect this, just so that things “match”? I am struggling to understand the issue with having a French ID on a French card with a stamp from another country.
I guess this will also cause issues for tags and RRs, unless i want to delay the sending of my cards and spend more time and money to send from France… which is far from ideal…
As much as i want to believe that many people do not mind, or at least will have the decency of sending a thank you message rather than a long moan, there are so many profiles stating in capital letters that the cards “have to come from the same place they are sent from”, that it really makes you want to stay away from the hassle.
I suppose i’ll have to try and see how it goes. And maybe avoid the exchanges via the forums.
Would anyone sending regularly from a neighbouring country be able to share their experience on both the main site and the forum? I’d just like understand if the complaints on these threads are disproportionately represented or if i have to expect to change how and how much i use postcrossing.
Thank you!
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I think that in general it’s not a problem for most people. Several countries have expensive postage costs with nearby countries having much cheaper postage costs. I think it’s perfectly fine to request an address at home with a card ID matching your home country and address where you receive postcards and then mailing that card from another country. I think that the part where people start to get upset is if it’s a card from a “rare” country and someone mails it from a more common country. For example, if you drew addresses in Liechtenstein but then found that the post office was closed and instead had to mail the postcards from Switzerland, someone might be upset that they had their address drawn from the uncommon country of Liechtenstein to receive a postcard, and then received a card actually from Switzerland. I was in a similar situation last year, I drew 3 addresses to send postcards from Belize but couldn’t find a post office in time to mail them from there, and ended up mailing the postcards from my home in Texas a few days later. None of the recipients expressed frustration, but I could understand why if they did. Last year on my way to Greece I had a layover in London. I bought some postcards at a gift shop inside Heathrow, drew some addresses inside Heathrow, and then couldn’t find a mailbox inside the airport, so I mailed them when I got to Greece.
Regarding swaps and tags/RR etc, I don’t think people will be particularly upset.
I am participating in a RR right now where one of the other members lives in Russia. The US Postal Service does not currently deliver mail to Russia, so people have to use an intermediary to get those postcards delivered and this is communicated ahead of time. In this case, I am using the United Nations Postal Service’s office in Vienna as the intermediary. So the RR member in Russia will receive a postcard from the USA with United Nations stamps and postmarked in Austria. It’s also common for Postcrossers in Mexico to visit the United States to mail postcards because the price of stamps is cheaper than stamps in Mexico, and because the US Postal Service delivers mail faster than the postal service in Mexico. I’ve done direct swaps with Postcrossers based in Mexico and they mentioned this ahead of time, it was totally fine with me because I was swapping for the postcard and not for the stamps, plus it arrived quickly for me because they mailed it from inside the USA.
The times where I think it could be a big problem is if there were issues with mail delivery. For instance, if the address I drew while waiting for my connecting flight was for a Postcrosser in Russia, and the UK delivers mail to Russia but Greece does not deliver mail to Russia, that would be a problem because I would be unable to mail it from Greece.
The Postal Monitor is kept up to date by the Postcrossing admin team so that nobody draws an address for a Postcrosser that they are unable to mail a postcard to, and drawing an address from one country and mailing it from another nullifies the benefit of this safeguard that is put in place to help things run smoothly.
In your case, drawing addresses in France and mailing them from the UK shouldn’t be much of a problem because the only countries that France can send mail to that the UK cannot (according to the Postal Monitor right now) are Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. None of those countries currently have a whole lot of members so it is unlikely that you will draw an address in one of those countries, but if you did, you’d need to just mail it from France.
The point here is that I think it’s fine and you should be able to do that with no trouble. I doubt that many people will be upset if they receive a French postcard with a French ID and a British stamp. But if you mailed a card from San Marino with a British stamp, people may be upset.
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I think many members prefer this, I too. But if it doesn’t happen, it of course ok. Do you often have time to write the cards when you work/are in your working country? I think when you go there often, changing to travel mode would become easy to you. Or if you work several days there, you don’t need to change it every day, I suppose. And you can easily send your normal cards there, even in Finland some places sell for example black and white photo cards that are French.
When sending officially, this is not very common, at least to me.
Maybe, when it happens, you can do how they wish, if it’s easy to you.
It’s just a wish, like you have in your profile.
Also one thought is, if you spend a lot of time in you work country (I get this assumption as it feels like you don’t have time to write cards in France), could you use it to your address and “home country”? You could receive your mail there, at your work?
Although many might prefer everything match, there are also members who don’t pay attention to such things at all. I prefer id and stamps to match, but I think I don’t even mention it in my profile anymore, because most of the times it happens already, and if not, there are reasons for it.
Edit. And thinking how many like series cards, these are printed in one country, but then they wish it to be send from the “origin” country, so I think members like this don’t care at all where you bought the card, because they even collect cards that are not printed/made where they hope it to be sent.
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It seems I need to clarify what I mean about living in one country and working in another. I will be moving back to France and work in a neighbouring country. I will have my address in France but commute every morning to work and come back home to France every night. So I will be writing my cards in the evening when in France but will be “abroad” during the day. Just like hundreds of thousands of workers who live near country borders. To me, it will just be: I work in the town a bit further, which happens to be in a different country.
It will be easier and cheaper for me to send from “abroad” rather than from France. Unfortunately, my experience of French post offices the last few times I went to visit were shockingly appalling on so many levels that I want to avoid sending anything out of France ever again.
I was thinking mostly of people wanting view/touristic cards. I’m afraid I wouldn’t even consider worrying about a stamp that doesn’t match the ID if it was a non view card. But sending a view card from a country where I only go back and forth to work is a no no for me as I might as well send a card with no message.
If you feel like explaining to the recipient, you can choose to write I’m spending most of my time in XX country and France is my temporary home. People will be more understanding as how the card came along. Just send whatever viewcard which you like (France or XX country).
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Yes, at least I think I understood.
So you would send a view from France where you will live, but with another country stamp, with France id.
Yes, some won’t like it.
Those who mention liking stamp and card and id match, you can fulfill the wish and send it from France. Or not.
I think I would like such, where someone tells they work in this country and/or this city. If you have time to buy the stamps there, and mail the cards, there might be something to write about that too, it’s not “only” work, but part of life too. And I don’t always write about the image in the card, so no matter what image, the message can be of my day, or what I did.
Actually I think if you go there every day, it’s normal day, you halfly live there.
But of course you do what you find easiest.
For some reason I get the feeling that you have already decided to send the card with the cheaper postage, and not do travel mode to have the id match, so that’s what you do then. Some will not prefer that, and maybe will mention it in their hurray, but you also seem aware of that. But I don’t think not many will write a long moan about it, or I hope so!
I don’t know how the tags etc, and how would it take more time to write from France, if that’s where you write your official cards too.
But my opinion: if I want a viewcard from France in a swap/tag, I like it to be sent from France. (And yes, would be disappointed if a person in France would tag me, and I would get card sent from Germany for example, so I would be clear in swaps, where you plan to mail your cards).
Then there are tags ands swaps where viewcard is intentionally sent from another country, this at least will be easy for you.
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