You might have noticed that your postcards to China have been taken longer than usual… and it’s not just yours. Today we have temporarily suspended all mail routes to China due to this.
For quite a few weeks now we have been monitoring postcards traveling to China, as the news of large city lockdowns and of bottlenecks at China’s international airports have been reported to cause long delays. We hoped for things to slowly get sorted over time, but our data shows that improvements have been very limited and very little is arriving, with new lockdowns being announced. There are even domestic routes in China that are currently suspended and/or having long delays.
As of today, only 5% of postcards sent ~60 days ago have been registered in China. Even of postcards sent ~90 days ago, only about ~40% made it so far. The usual (global) average travel time to China is 50-60 days.
As it’s unclear when the situation will improve, to prevent more postcards from getting into this situation, we are temporarily suspending this destination, while we monitor for the already large amount of traveling postcards to finally arrive. We plan to restore the route when it becomes clear that the backlog is being sorted and delivered.
As for mail from China, although not doing great, seems to be less affected for the moment.
I will be updating this topic when we have more news. For moment, if you have postcards in this situation, try to be patient — things will eventually get sorted. If you are in China, I hope things will get back to normal soon so that you can get your due postcards.