I haven’t received postcards for a while, and it seems very strange to me. I have checked my address and it is correct, my account is in active mode. Since I don’t know what else I can check, I am writing to see if you can help me.
Today I have 11 more postcards sent than received. Unfortunately, as always, I have expired postcards (among them a few users who haven’t appeared on the page for months).
I hope you can help me.
I hope to receive news soon, so I can continue enjoying the project.
Thanks in advance,
Anastasiia
PS: I’ve been trying to contact with support for a few weeks, but have no answer…
that’s why I ask here.
I have the same issue. For 4 weeks now I’ve gotten almost no postcards (except for 2 on the 7th of Feb) and I’ve been requesting and sending one after another
Maybe you have to ask your postal services (Poczta Polska and Correos) about the problem. I have noticed that postcards to your countries need almost twice the time to arrive. For example from Cyprus to Spain needed 10-15, now it needs a month, the same for Poland.
I struggled with the similar issue and had to check with my local post office. Turns out - they were out of postman and I had to find my cards myself in a huge box of unsorted mail. After that I switched adress to a new one but about 20+ cards got missed completely and postcrossing team had to automatically registered them. I still hope to receive them one day…
There is no problem with Correos because all this time I have been receiving postcards from my family and friends.
Really, sometimes they took long time, but finaly arives.
But what I really dont understaned, why the support team of posstcrosing did not answer to my requests.
Indeed there must be some postcards traveling to you - 13 of your sent cards were recieved in the last two months, so that your address was surely given to other members. But postal services are still slow, even from / to Germany, due to the strike of the postal workers. Sometimes I get a whole bunch of cards in one day, after receiving nothing for days, and some traveled unusually long (like 47 days from Greece).
I understand that you expected to hear from the support - i guess that there are many requests and they have to set priorities for going through them all.
You had 562 sent and 561 received on 22 November. That’s the day your address was eligible again to be picked. Maybe the card sent on that day was lost or still traveling from an exotic country.
You have more cards registered on 27 December - 5 January. That was the time where people very busy with year end/new year holiday. Maybe those who got your address during that time could only send your card on 1st week of January after they come back from holiday. Considering now is only 2nd week of February, it’s only 5 weeks traveling time which is new normal in current situation.
I talked to Poczta Polska, my local office, but they always brush me off saying “if there is nothing in the mailbox then there is nothing for you” but I just know they say it to everyone and don’t check anything. This is PP’s stance on everything. Not answering phone calls and when inquired in person then “deny, deny, deny”. A month ago I was getting at least 1 postcard a week (even though it was mostly more), now I’m checking my mailbox everyday and it’s just empty.
It looks like you had more received than sent until January 31st, so your address was not given out to other postcrossers from the point that your received>sent.
Then, on 31st January, your sent cards were more than your received and on that day your address was given to postcrossers again. You have already received 2 cards from that day.
That’s how it works most of the time now. On day X a card you sent gets registered and your sent>received, your address is given to multiple people and you start receiving cards. Then on day Y you have received so many that your received>sent and even though you keep sending cards, your address does not go out again until your sent cards are again more than your received.
I will say I’ve noticed mail to many destinations seems to be taking twice as long these days whether it’s from Canada to the US (always a problem but more so in the last month) or to Europe or Asia. Half my cards travelling right now (10 of them) are over 30 days which isn’t usual.
And I haven’t received many cards in the last month either.
There have been some strikes, cuts to service & likely still many postal workers off sick with any of the 3 or 4 viruses out there now all of which affect delivery times.
Are these people within Spain (mail from other Spanish people)? In recent days, I find mail sent from USA definitely slower to arrive than other European countries.
Please be patient with Admin.
They must get hundreds of mail each day. Plus they manage the site.
Most important, they are a small group of volunteers with jobs outside Postcrossing (so they can eat and pay for shelter).
It may feel no one is listening, but there is only so much time, so few resources.
By reaching out to the larger community, though, you are getting some reasonable considerations for the mail hold-up.
In fact, it looks like quite a few of us share your experience with mail hold-up, etc.
Here, you are not alone.
We all feel the sadness when cards take a long time to be registered. That was one of the reasons I joined different groups in the forum : so I could receive more mail, more quickly. And what a great place to meet more really wonderful people!
Around December 20 I sent about 15 postcards, and almost all of them have already reached their destinations, including one to Phillipines… and the only one that is still on the way (I hope that is the case, instead of being lost) is the one I sent to Warsaw ((((
As others have mentioned above, I also experience that mail to many countries now takes longer than what they used to. If the issue is not with your local post office or delivery, then maybe there is an issue in the sender’s country. There has been recent strikes both in Great Britain and in Germany.
I also have more postcards expired or about to expire (or at least it feels that way) now than before the pandemic. So something has definitely happened.
Please be patient, and hopefully more postcards will arrive to you soon
I was just talking to a friend about the lack of good customer service at the US post office and I told her I have learned from Postcrossing that postal workers around the world seem to be very similar! So, right or wrong, I can tell you what usually works for me here. I always try to be extra nice to the counter clerks. I bring them a snack package of cookies. Yes, I bribe them with treats! I tell them how grateful I am that they are taking an extra minute to help me. (Even though this is their job!) I tell them their hair looks nice - whatever it takes! No, I shouldn’t have to do any of this. But, they control my mail and I want my post cards! Luckily, most of the actual mail carriers really just want to get all the mail delivered, so it’s easier to deal with them! And, honestly, I can tell you from experience working at the post office, the counter clerks have to take a lot of nastiness from customers throughout the day. So, if you become extra-friendly, it may pay off with better service! And, sometimes, when I see who is working at the counter, I just turn around and come back later! I say this with humor, but it really does work most of the time for me.
