Mystery Postcard

I received a postcard today, it was not through a direct swap, but does not have a registration number on it, so now what?

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@JDAJDAH You can click on the “help finding a postcard ID” link on the postcard registration page. See here:

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Thank you for your help. :slight_smile:

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It’s so annoying to receive a postcard through Postcrossing and the sender forgets to put the ID on it. That’s the first thing I do when I get an address is put the ID number on the postcard. It’s almost like forgetting to put a stamp on the postcard…like, REALLY???

It can happen. We are all human and not machines.
There are worse things than a forgotten ID… 🤷🏻

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Most of the time when I think it’s missing, I’m about to fill in the form and then notice it’s written somewhere weird like above (or below :flushed:) the address. I’m so surprised that cards with a postcard ID in the address make it to anywhere, but it happens very often. Only once, in my very early days of postcrossing, I needed help from the admins to get the ID.

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I mostly needed help from the Postcrossing team not because the ID was missing, but because I wasn’t able to read it, or a number was missing or mixed up… :thinking:

And it also happened to me, perfectionist that I am, to forget the ID.

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Recently I received two cards with wrong IDs. And I think I have only three cards where the ID is missing completely and I have received more than 800 cards. And I even forgot to write my ID at least two times myself. That’s human!

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What’s annoying with that? It can happen to anyone. It’s not intentional and you can usually get help quickly from support or you play Sherlock and try to find the sender by yourself (what I did several times with success)
I also usually write the ID first, but nevertheless, for whatever reason, I have also forgotten it several times too.

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Dear @JDAJDAH,

If you enter this, you will likely receive a response from the team with the correct ID within a few hours : https://www.postcrossing.com/contact?category=postcard-ids
and this page : https://www.postcrossing.com/receive/unknown

It’s best to follow aerobear’s suggestion in this case.
Sometimes I almost forget because I’m a bit new and not used to it yet. But maybe for veterans it comes more naturally. Please be patient with us :sweat_smile:

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I always write the ID first, just before the date. Sometimes if I’m writing postcards that are not for postcrossing I feel lost for a second because there is no ID to write :joy:

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I find this so nice! Specially because I can’t do it myself and often wonder how others do so.

I also always write the ID right after I choose the card, but there was one time I wrote the card at the post office waiting in line and completely forgot about it. Then I received a message from the recipient saying “I managed to find you, can you tell me what’s the ID number you forgot to write on the card?” (It felt somehow like a scolding :sweat_smile:). At the time I wondered why they didn’t just ask the PC team, but I do see now the appealing of playing Sherlock.

Maybe I’ll start sending out all my postcards without the ID from now on.

I always try to play Sherlock first. So far it has always worked for me. My last two incorrect IDs had one wrong digit each and after some try and error I scored a hit. KZ-53063 instead of KZ-53064 and FR-1375533 instead of FR-1375536.

I also try to play Sherlock first. I got two cards with incorrect ID and two cards without any ID, but managed to track down the senders. I hope they didn’t feel like I was scolding them, after all I just wanted to register their cards and thank them! If I wasn’t able to figure out the sender myself, naturally I would contact the PC team. I just think that I’ll do the easy work myself and ask help when needed. And it feels great when you have managed solved the “mystery”.