Mail to China (2022 temporary suspension)

[Cinher]

@meiadeleite

Postcrossing’s data does not show that some areas of China are normal, thus this temporary suspension applies to the whole country.

There is no doubt that this statement is completely wrong.

First, there are large numbers of Chinese who are receiving cards normally. Even under this topic, many people are using their own way to prove that they can receive normally or the situation is recovering. However, Postcrossing managers turned a blind eye: They insisted that there are no areas are normal.

Second, the Postcrossing’s data has NO statistical validity. As I have stated before:

@Cinher

Chinese users will receive fewer and fewer postcards over time under the block of Postcrossing. And these postcards are sent before China was blocked. As a result, China’s statistics will get even worse.

What we want is nothing but the same rights as users in other countries.

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@Chris_sunshine

after sometime their account would became “zombie account”too. Then even after that,pc send China address again. They might stop using it and these cards may not be registered again. So what would happen? Stop sending chinese address again?

This may happen. In any case, they will lose Chinese users and keep China blocked for longer. Is this the result they want?

[varn]

@Cinher

Second, the Postcrossing’s data has NO statistical validity. As I have stated before:

@Cinher

Chinese users will receive fewer and fewer postcards over time under the block of Postcrossing. And these postcards are sent before China was blocked. As a result, China’s statistics will get even worse.

The focus is on the postcards sent to China between mid-April and mid-June, and given the ongoing suspension, there is no new official data. We’re waiting (or betting) for the majority of that batch of postcards to be registered, hopefully before June 2023 when they are still in the system. Whether the postal service is improving or not doesn’t really matter now. In this sense, the suspension must be temporary.

[Nordbaer]

@Cinher

First, there are large numbers of Chinese who are receiving cards normally

Prove it.

[Chris_sunshine]

Maybe see the date of post mark?
Of course,you could say one not meant all.
But as I say,not everyone use forum.
We can’t ask every chinese user send on here

[Nordbaer]

I see only Chinese postmarks and Chinese letters.
This thread is not for cards within China.

[Chris_sunshine]

These cards obviously sent from overseas
Ok fine I will take a pic of whole card

[June060310]

The two cards written in Chinese are from Taiwan. There are members from more than one country using Chinese.
But obviously admins have reliable statistics for the suspension. I am afraid some instances from a few users cannot prove that the post system is working well.

[haha577]

Can someone show the data here? Make it clearly to everyone so our Chinese users can truly understand how many postcards are still on their way. We did received a huge amount of postcards recently which give us a feeling that things has already back to normal. For me, I sent 16 postcards out after Paulo said the mail suspension, that means I only have 3 left before the suspension, I think that is a common figure for every users.

Just looking forward to know the specific data which may give us a hope.

[satinification]

My traveling card to China arrived after 142 days. So I guess the user will receive 2 other cards (at least) as well .

Based on forum games, it seems to me that the situation has improved and a lot of postcards have reached their destination. I do not monitor all postcards traveling to China but it is just an impression I have being active on the forum. The last data was from the end of June. Maybe the current ones would show some change?

[Cinher]

Chinese users are generally considerate. Because of this, the team’s decisions do not take into account the feelings of any Chinese users. We can clearly see that there are many areas that have returned to normal (even in this topic, just now, @Chris_sunshine showed evidence. Not only that, but many people have shown evidence in this topic or other platforms). However, some chose to ignore it, including the managers. All they say is, “suspend the whole China”. They choose not to look at the situation in many regions in China.

There are always some postcards that don’t reach their destination. So will it take a year (cards completely expired) to lift the Postcrossing-restrictions on China? Even after a year, the team lifts the block, a large number of users has quit Postcrossing (meaning the cards can’t reach) could lead to another block in China. But few would question the justification of the block. Think about it, what would users do if something like this (almost block a whole country）happened in another country?

Hope? With neither the block nor the data itself justified, hope does not exist. Chinese users just want to be treated equally, but it never happens.

[caefae]

@Cinher

We can clearly see that there are many areas that have returned to normal (even in this topic, just now, @Chris_sunshine showed evidence. Not only that, but many people have shown evidence in this topic or other platforms). However, some chose to ignore it, including the managers.

These statements are not true and unfair to admins, so copying them and writing in bold won’t make them true. Admins see the bigger picture and overall stats. A few examples of cards arriving in some areas don’t make significant difference in the total amount of cards. Yes, I think many of us noticed some positive change and arrival of cards, but it still takes time to resolve this kind of a backlog. We all hope it happens soon and I’m sure that the suspension will be lifted as soon as statistics allow it. On top of that, ‘evidence’ that some people showed here included cards sent within China, which were posted to deceive readers, along with many statements that were plain wrong and clearly ignored everything posted in the topic before.

There are countries that are completely blocked due to postal restrictions, for much longer time than China, as stated in the postal monitor. If the situation is back to normal, why is China post discouraging new mail?

[varn]

Sorry if I missed something but where is the source of information that says China Post is discouraging new mail? Could anyone post a link here please?

[June060310]

@paulo

Unfortunately there isn’t yet much progress to tell about, but I want to give an update on how things are going.

I have spent some time graphing the average travel times of mail to China, as well as the amount of postcards delivered. This is how things look at the moment (click for bigger):

Just ensure that everyone has read this post. We are seems spending time with same solved questions over and over again.

And as the previous post said,

@Bille

We have all been using this site for years, mind you, without paying a fee for it.

We are all not in a position to make demands, the most we can do is ask for something.

But if that request cannot be fulfilled, and at the same time we are told why not, then we have to accept that.

Paulo spent time making a graph for us, though it’s not his duty to post the data on the forum.

[Izzy2018]

Instead of postmarks, you can look at a sample of Chinese member accounts and examine their received charts. These will show what mail has arrived in 2022 and how long the since the cards were mailed (around 2+ months), but it wont show how many cards to China are yet to be delivered. Paulo has that info and has previously posted that the number is in the thousands. He is waiting for the backlog to be cleared up. As it does members in China will receive lots of mail.

[noname13]

When I get a Chinese address in a tag, I always check the received cards. And it looks like many of these are now receiving cards sent in March, April and May.
One of my cards from a tag arrived after more than 3 months some days ago and the user wrote that she had no mail for 4 weeks and just got more than 50 cards at once. I checked her received cards then and most of the received cards she registered that day were from March and April.
Receiving mail from China seems to be faster, too. At least from my experience from tags and RRs.

So if most cards now arrive in August, then it should be possible to unsuspend mail to China soon. And then we’ll have to write many cards to China

[Izzy2018]

there is a preset number of official cards that members can send based on user level. You should have 8 slots based on this policy:

How many postcards can I send?

Your account of 30 sent & 25 received is quite balanced and as your postal system works through the backlog you should receive those 5 cards soon.

[varn]

As the only criterion for lifting the suspension, we’re locked in with the registration rate of the official postcards sent to China between mid-April and mid-June. This is equivalent to committing oneself to an even more tricky situation.

• If the suspension is lifted right now, considering many field reports of the improving postal service in China, then the suspension will only look unnecessary in the first place. Such consultation should’ve taken place way earilier.
• If the majority of those postcards are lost or aren’t registered within one year, then should we bail out?

Flexi-slots for postally unreliable destinations

No one expects the problems and troubles of postal services worldwide to be solved here, but in terms of managing user satisfaction, or in this case, user frustration, the address assignment and quota rules do play an important role. Inasmuch as people in other parts of the world are arranging private swaps with people in China, the official exchanges may incorporate that flexibility as well. So as I’ve written above, I echo the idea of creating a second category of slots for postally unreliable destinations. Granted, most likely only China will fall under this category should it be implemented. However, revisions of this sort seem to be future-proof.

@varn

First of all, contributors to the the topic about mail suspension alerts are doing an excellent job of keeping the Postal Monitor updated, which applies to origin-desination pairs. However, due to lack ot information from respective postal services, the Postal Monitor may not, and is not intended to in the first place, reflect the actual situation of postal routes or travel times.

Understandably, the all-important World Postcard Day is coming. Besides, a review of the address assignment and quota rules was not of high priority at the very beginning.

[Wilmariina]

@Cinher

Think about it, what would users do if something like this (almost block a whole country）happened in another country?

It has happened before (I’m showing one example here), is also happening in many other countries than just in China and I’m quite sure will happen many times in the future.

[English] Mail from Finland to Russia

Hi everyone! If you have postcards traveling to Russia right now, it’s very likely that they are taking longer than usual… and you should know that this is not normal. We have noticed that over the past weeks nearly no postcards from Finland are reaching their destinations in Russia. In fact, since around early July that nearly no postcards are being registered, going very quickly from an average of 500 postcards/week to single digit numbers! This means that there are now thousands of p…

[paulo]

We have been checking on this on a weekly basis, but it’s been about a month since the last update, so now is a good time for another update.

First, the good news: the pace of mail delivery seems to be picking up. Here’s the previous chart, but now with the data for July. For details on how to read the data in this chart, please refer to the previous post (click the chart for bigger):

If it holds at this level for another 2-4 weeks, we may reevaluate the situation.

Now for the not so great news. While some of the more recent mail is being delivered, it remains that only half (~51%) of mail sent ~4 months ago has arrived.

Moreover, for mail sent 2 months ago (≈China’s average travel time), only 17.5% has been delivered, which, while being an improvement from mid-June, is still unusually low. For some comparison terms, the equivalent values for Macao and Hong Kong are 72% and 85% respectively.

So, our main concerns:

1. the backlog doesn’t seem to be given priority: a significant part of mail sent 4-5 months ago (from today) is still not delivered, while some more recent postcards seems to be arriving already. We don’t know why this is happening, and at the rate that (older) mail is arriving it may take a few more months for it to finally reach the destination.

2. in part due to all the backlogged mail being delivered, the average travel times remain very high (last week had an average of 114 days) and it’s not clear yet whether it will return to anywhere near the previous values (which were already some of the longest in Postcrossing). If average travel times remain at ~4 months, exchanging postcards will be an even bigger patience exercise to say the least, specially for postcrossers in China which also need to account for long outbound travel times before postcards are sent back to them.

Some have pointed out that because Postcrossing suspended the route there are fewer deliveries to be made which can make it confusing to look at the data — we are aware of this. But right now there are still tens of thousands of postcards stranded somewhere and at a rate of delivery of less than 3k per week, there’s still quite a bit of backlog to go through. Moreover, only 10% of the postcards sent on the week we suspended this route have arrived so far, so I don’t think we are near the point where we need to worry too much with that, but we are keeping it in mind.

Lastly, when we introduced this temporary suspension, we had some hope that the problem would quickly sort itself out, specially with the end of the lockdowns in some bigger cities in China. Sadly, this is dragging longer than we hoped. Nonetheless, there are some positive signs in terms of rate of delivery, so hopefully things will keep heading in the right direction.

[HookedonPostcards]

Thank you @paulo for this recent update.