Usually I send a card every other day. Deviating sending sequences occur from time to time for some reasons, but are always exeptions.
But I don’t receive a card every other day. Sometimes in my mailbox there are 4 or even more cards, sometimes there is not any card for one or two weeks. Sometimes I have more cards sent than received, sometimes it’s the other way round. Same with the cards I’ve sent - sometimes three or more cards are registrated in one day, some times it’s 10 days or more without any registrated sent card.
Suppose it depends of many factors. Algorithm, country of destination, how regularly does the sender/receiver send/registrate, postal service, holidays (sending and receiving country) etc. Too many factors which you cannot influence.
At the moment you have more cards received, so you have to wait your cards to get registered. When numbers go other way round (more sent than received) you’ll start to get cards again. So this is all about how fast and where your cards are going. You or Postcrossing team can’t do anything, it’s all up to postal sercive in different coutries.
I reached out to Support over this two months ago. What I was told is that there are times when they have more people sending postcards than those that are owed postcards. Some people have set their accounts to inactive or are in travel mode so their addresses don’t go out. Postcrossing’s algorithm selects people that they know are going to be owed postcards at some point in the future. So if you are sending 6 postcards, you will be owed 6 in future. When the system gets to a point where they don’t have addresses to select, postcards are sent to you in advance. It’s either this or people seeing a message that they aren’t any addresses.
The last time I got a handful of postcards in one day, what I did was register them over a span of 2-3 days.
If you live with someone, you could perhaps ask them to register your cards and then read one every week or so I’m not sure if that’s helpful…
Oh, and there is nothing you can do, it’s been like this for me all along. Weeks and weeks with nothing received, then my address goes out 10 times in one day and then I take months to catch up. It is what it is.
It’s not that I ‘sometimes’ receive more cards than I send, it’s a trend, it happens by default.
I’ve been a member of postcrossing for 10 years, I know sometimes you get more cards than you receive. But “sometimes” is something else than “every time again”. This is a trend, it keeps happening. And not a few cards extra, but a lot, every time again.
I don’t mind if there are sometimes no PC cards or a few weeks. But I haven’t had any PC cards for 4 weeks now and there is a good chance that nothing will come in the next 2 weeks. 1-2 weeks ok, but 6 weeks is very long in my opinion. That’s a bit demotivating. It would be different if I only sent something once every 2 months. But I send regularly.
I want to use the official postcrossing. I also have pen pals, participate in the friends club and sometimes participate in a lottery, but I mainly want to use the official postcrossing. I am not interested in the other activities. My question is also about the official postcrossing and not about filling my mailbox.
@anon12838227
Thank you. I’ve heard this reason more than once, also for other ‘problems’, but this must be solvable. If more people experience that their address is given 10 times on the same day, it should be possible to divide this more.
If they need 10 addresses, they can do 2-3x the address of 4 people instead of 10x the address of 1 person. And that on four days.
As I said, that is the only way it ever happens to me. The only other way would probably be to send more. My address was drawn on 26 August multiple times (and that’s because I had a lucky phase when so many of my cards sent were registered quickly), the previous time was 22 May - I sent nothing for 4-5 weeks due to life happening, but even sending regularly, before May there was March (2 cards) and February. I have a gap in my address being selected between October 2021 and January 2022 (I might have been inactive for a bit but if I recall there was no need to do so because I was so behind).
I didn’t look at your profile and i genuinely thought you were a new member because this seems normal to me. Not super ideal, but I really don’t see how it can be solved if it is the way it works for most.
Some argue that a way to solve it would be to not allow to unselect repeated countries (and to some extent not to allow to not send within your own country). Arguably, the reason I get picked 10 times in a day is that the algorithm skips 9 Germans because people don’t want to send repeated times to Germany (I am oversimplifying because I don’t understand algorithms and stats). The only people who don’t experience this imbalance are those from the biggest countries, because they get skipped a lot due to the features above.
Thank you @elikoa,
10 years ago I did postcrossing from the Netherlands. There are a lot of postcrossers there.
I think I received cards much more regularly then.
Since last year I do PC from Norway and it goes like this.
So I’m not new, but apparently things are different in another country.
Yes, maybe it has to do with the fact that many only want to send to different countries.
I often send to the same countries, or actually I only send to Russia, I rarely get an address from a country other than Russia.
I hope a solution can be found. For example, that people only can send temporarily or limitedly to different countries. If this is indeed the cause. Because this is not so much fun for others.
It’s the same here. Whenever I’m due 1-2 postcards I’m showered in them and then it takes a long time to catch up.
My address has been given out up to 18 times in one day!
Luckily since the postcards are sent from different countries with different travelling times they usually arrive in batches, no more than 5-6 a day.
I don’t think there is a solution. Just accept Postcrossing is like this
Sorry, me again! Also maybe 10 years ago the pace of postcrossing was different, there were less members, so this happened less? I saw your profile now, you had a gap of several years so maybe it changed gradually but you can see the difference more clearly between then and now?! Not sure, just thinking!
I live in a major postcrossing country and I suspect that the reason is both the algorithm and the respective country’s postal system. Like Norway, Finland has reduced the number of delivery days in a week over the years. Currently, the mail is usually delivered on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So my cards often come in large batches too because there are fewer delivery days. I remember receiving cards more evenly in the beginning of my PC membership (2013-2014) when we had a five-day-delivery from Monday to Friday.
That more people want to send cards to different countries or stop the official postcrossing and do other things
and that’s why more people don’t like how things are going
and that’s why more people want to send to different countries or stop the official postcrossing
and so on.
Because that are the advices I get.
Do other things than official PC and/or send to more different countries.
But people can also pause their account while they are sending cards.
That also costs more addresses than there are.
If you can send 50 cards without your address being selected even once.
But then perhaps there were also fewer people who choose to send to different countries all the time.
I don’t know when that feature came, or if it was always there.
The system has to be under some strain right now given that a bunch of bigger countries like the US & Canada aren’t sending mail to Russia & Belarus & of course no one is sending official mail to China now either. When those large countries are taken out or temporarily not receiving some cards, it must be hard for the system to be balanced.
I often get mail in batches from particular countries like their int’l mail has been building up somewhere & then it finally gets sent (whether short staffing, lack of flights or an economic decision by that postal system not to send so frequently?). The cards can range in dates from at least 30 days apart sometimes.
This is interesting. I have been sending from the Czech Republic since 2011. It is in the top 10 most active countries and I experience the same thing as you do. We have delivery days on all work days by the way. I suspected the algorithm must have changed when it became more fair. I remember it never waited for me to have more sent than received but the cards were much better distributed and there weren’t so many extra cards. But maybe it is due to other factors, who knows
When I joined nearly 9 years ago, many of my cards went to Finland and the Netherlands. This has changed a lot, although I kept sending from the same country. I think the reason may be because the postage in those countries was raised massively.
I think we are also seeing the knock-on effects of 3 years of COVID, which have affected all kinds of things besides the # of postal workers available at any given point in time.
I got 5 cards from Germany. Don’t get me wrong I like my German neighbours, but it’s nice to get cards from some other countries as well. The German cards all arrive so quickly. Get like 4 cards in one day.
Yes, it has. It’s a reoccuring problem for people living in “smaller” Postcrossing countries. When I lived in my home country Finland (which used to be a hugely active Postcrossing country, but not so anymore - I left Finland in early 2022), I noticed the same pattern all the time: every time I had sent one card more than I had received, my address went into the address pool multiple times, which resulted in receiving a huge amount of cards in a short period of time - and then nothing for a few weeks, as it took me ages to catch up again.
Now that I live in Germany, this isn’t a problem anymore, probably mainly because Germany is very active and my address isn’t as “wanted” because many people prefer to send to different countries (don’t get me wrong, I know that they don’t have anything against Germany, but it’s a fact that many people want more variety). The algorithm tries to select addresses to different countries, so for example a Finnish (or Norwegian) postcrosser is likely to be selected instead. Occasionally I still have a couple of received cards more than sent, but never a large amount, and it never feels like catching up anymore. My mailbox is happy more often.
Postcrossing in Finland was stressful and sometimes even exhausting because of this irregular pattern of receiving cards, and I truly sympathize with you, @Molletje. In my dream world Postcrossing would be “1 for 1”, meaning that every time someone sends a card, their address gets selected only once. Of course this isn’t always possible due to a high demand for addresses in general, but I just don’t think it’s fair to select someone’s address more than 10 times just because they happen to live in a rarer country. A few times would be OK, but definitely not more than 10, phew.
This is why I’m always encouraging people to choose sending to repeated countries. It is fair for everyone, and that way everyone’s chances of getting different countries would be equal. Postcrossing would be truly random, which could be so much fun!
It’s something that never really bothered me I guess. In Ireland we have a five day delivery week. last week on Tuesday morning I received 11 postcards at once and mixture of official PC cards and a few members that were kind enough to send me some to cheer me up. My postman actually rang my doorbell which is extremely unusual if it’s not a registered letter. He was curious and asked me why I was receiving 11 postcards at one’s. Back in 2018 we had a postal lady who began to noticed a high-volume of postcards coming to my address. So one day she made sure to deliver my letters last as she ended up ringing my doorbell and we had a 1-hour conversation about postcards and stamps.
I’m not sure if that’s helpful…
As I said, that is the only way it ever happens to me. The only other way would probably be to send more. My address was drawn on 26 August multiple times (and that’s because I had a lucky phase when so many of my cards sent were registered quickly), the previous time was 22 May - I sent nothing for 4-5 weeks due to life happening, but even sending regularly, before May there was March (2 cards) and February. I have a gap in my address being selected between October 2021 and January 2022 (I might have been inactive for a bit but if I recall there was no need to do so because I was so behind).
It is fair for everyone, and that way everyone’s chances of getting different countries would be equal. Postcrossing would be truly random, which could be so much fun!