Why do people list their expired postcards on their profile? Am I supposed to do that?
Thanks.
No, you definitely are not expected to list expired cards at all. 
Some people have decided to list them - partly to keep a record for themselves, and partly because theyâre disappointed that those cards donât contribute to their total of âSentâ postcards. (Probably there are lots of other reasons too.) It is of course disappointing when cards donât arrive, but no-one expects you to list them on your profile.
Your profile is mainly a space to talk a bit about yourself and all your interests. 
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There was another post, where the expired postcards were mentioned too, among other things. Someone said the word âcemetaryâ and how much he/she hated that. I guess it is a matter of personal choice, but I donât put the expired postcards at my profile. I donât find it to be useful in any way, but that is just me
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I think it is useless to list expired cards. Maybe next week, next month or even next day it could arrive. Last year I received a message from a user asking me if I receive his card which already travel for 61 days. I replied no and he added me on the list of his expired just 1 day after it expired 
Few days after I finally received his card and he updated his list again. Wasting time, isnât it?
What funnier is once I read a profile who lists his expired and the date of the expired cards arrive 
ID - 123 expired on 01/01/21
ID - 234 expired on 02/02/21
ID - 345 expired on 03/03/21, finally arrived 04/04/21 
I think listing cards drop by the system after 1 year is okay. It shows your history.
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I think this often feels rather accusatory, especially when people include usernames with the cards. What information does this convey? Itâs like saying âI sent to this person and they didnât register - watch out!â.
The only reason I can think of to do it is if you have a lot of cards expiring and are worried that people will think your stats look bad, but other members can only see your sent count, which doesnât include traveling/expired, so this is not relevant.
If someone needs to keep track of this, they should do it somewhere private, not on their profile.
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I agree and have posted something on my profile to basically say this. I understand if someone wants to list expired cards count for their own tracking, but listing the username feels weird to me. Why call it out?
Hereâs whatâs on my profile:
Expired cards: inevitable. We send small pieces of paper across vast distances and sometimes they get lost. I donât list expired cards with a Postcrossing memberâs username on my profile because I would not want anyone to think I am upset with or blaming the user for the card not arriving.
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I have a Word sheet where I list them for myself. I think thatâs enough. 
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Definitely. Itâs not anyoneâs fault if people havenât received the postcardsâit probably got lost or stuck during transit. On the other hand, putting such a list on a profile does reveal more about that person rather than anyone else that theyâre sending their cards to. To me, it shows that these people are interested in statistics, detail oriented, and feel that itâs extremely important to show these statistics publicly for some reason.
I personally donât understand why itâs so important for people to show how many cards they have expired on their profiles instead of a private spreadsheet. Do they want me to write a message to them showing sympathy that they have so many expired? Is this a passive-aggressive way to make people register their cards? Do they want to give an indication that the postal service isnât reliable? I would be interested to hear the rationale from someone who does this.
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In my opinion it just âcluttersâ the profile because itâs harder to read when there a list of things that you donât necessarily need on the list. Especially if people (I have no problem with this. After all it makes it easier sometimes) have lists of likes and dislikes. Itâs just a bit confusing sometimes. Although it doesnât make me like angry at that person or something. They have every right to put what they want on their profile (unless itâs rude or something bad I guess).
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No need to list expired IDâs
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To me it makes no sense.
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The only postcards that I personally keep track of (in my mind not on my profile) are the ones that got deleted after traveling for over a year, which is only one to Russia so far, luckily.
Intriguing topic; what I found more interesting in reading the profile of a postcrosser who has sent/received 10000+ cards was a simple statement of the percentage of expired cards (I believe it was around 2.5%). I thought about that number in terms of money spent, and I can see where the member would lament the loss. But the question that can never be answered is this: how many hands have touched the card from sender to receiver? How careful is the handling from point A to point B? Just as voyages fared across this world centuries ago, we will never know. No one in postcrossing is necessarily to blame.
1 Like
I also calculate the percentage of expired cards from time to time - the average amount of lost cards is interesting in my opinion, but a list of IDs? 
Makes no sense to me. If users do this, hoping that the recipients stumble upon their site and see that theyâve missed a card, this doesnât work without the names. And listing the names indeed can appear kind of accusatoryâŚ
Btw, my average percentage of expired cards is 2,2%. 
1 Like
I should make myself clearer; yes, I agree that an expired list on a profile seems a waste of effort. Who most likely sees the list? The postcrosser who is about to send a card and is trying to match the recipientâs interests with what is on hand to sendâNOT the one who sent the expired card! Is is very likely that person will see the list? I doubt it.
As a matter of fact, I share exactly the same opinion. To add up to this argument, when you write something at your profile, you use characters and the number is limited. Why should you use these characters to write about your expired postcards, instead of writing a few more preferences? Or even some things about yourself, in order for the sender to read and make a better choice for you? It makes no sense at all, as @RalfH saidâŚ
I happened to stumble upon many such profiles. Seeing their list of expired postcards, made no interest for me.
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I think most people who list expired cards in their profile are probably people who saw these lists in someone elseâs profile and thought that this is something they needed to do too.
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Iâve been told that they list them in case someone who randomly goes by their profile will see it and be kind enough to register that ID in for them⌠Iâve had some people email me asking if I ever received their postcard after it got over the expiration date but then I will just ask them for the ID number so I can register it quickly for them without even having the postcard because I hate that feeling of getting my postcard expired and the receiver totally ignoring my emails
But you shouldnât do that;
Why do some members have a list of expired Postcard IDs on their profile?
Some members post a list of expired postcards on their profile to keep track of the cards that never reached their destination.
We donât encourage this practice, as most of the time, the members who will be reading your profile are those who have been assigned to send you a postcard⌠and they get no valuable information from reading a list of your expired postcards. Your profile should be about you.
Even if by chance the recipient sees their username and a Postcard ID on one of these lists, they should not register that postcard if it did not arrive.
Keep in mind that mail can be unreliable and sometimes postcards do get lost, are mis-delivered or accidentally damaged during their journey. If you have contacted the receiver and they say it didnât arrive, consider sending a second with the same Postcard ID â itâs quite common that a second attempt changes an expired postcard into a registered one.
If youâd like to see a list of your expired postcards, you can do so on your Traveling Postcards page. Please note that postcards which have been traveling for longer than a year are removed from Postcrossingâs database, and can no longer be registered.
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I recently found the profile of a person who not only listed the ID of the card, but also the username of the person the card was sent to, the country and the date of sendingâŚ