Option to Not Except and Address

It is frustrating to get a new address and see in the stats that the person has not checked-in for a month, had no activity for two months or has NEVER registered a card (sent 30 and registered none for example). Most times I know that I have to wait 60 days for this postcard to expire. It would be nice to have a limited number of options to not except the address and request a new one. Maybe twice a calendar month option.

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This starts to get into the area of choosing addresses we want or don’t want & I don’t think the system is built for that & it’s a very slippery slope. It’s one of the key features of Postcrossing that addresses are assigned randomly.

Yes, we ALL get some addresses we’d perhaps prefer not to have, but that’s the way it goes & it evens out eventually.

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Well, those are the rules. Works for the majority of members over many many years. There are many things in life that require patience, including PostCrossing.

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As mentioned above, this option to not accept addresses is a slippery slope and will open a can of worms. While we can all understand the frustration of drawing a profile who doesn’t seem to be registering cards and seems to be missing from action, I wouldn’t be too quick to judge especially during this pandemic. The person could be facing mail restrictions from many countries, and the area he/she lives in might not have mail services visit as often. Or the person could simply be bulk registering, which is not encouraged on Postcrossing but it happens.

Having this option would open up the site to more misuse, such as people choosing not to send to countries which are more common, or people choosing not to send postcards to a profile with requeats they cannot fulfil. I’m sure this messes up the backend logarithm a lot. This system isn’t as easy as we think it is.

Anyway, this is usually felt more strongly for newer Postcrossers as they only have a few cards travelling at the same time. Perhaps you can channel the extra time into finding other postcards online, or even finding stamps. If you really want to send and receive postcards, there is always the option of participating in this forum’s Tag and Round Robin activities.

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I had about 50 sent and no received, didn’t mean a thing once I activated my account. Every single one of the 62 cards I’ve since received was registered on the day I got them.
Not everyone spends enormous amounts of time on here, just because they don’t check in every day it doesn’t mean they’ve left.

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Also, if the activity looks really “dodgy” (for lack of a better word) you can contact the admins. But that doesn’t mean low activity. You get profiles that look a bit dead, sometimes they are and sometimes they are not.

Also it’s very unlikely that you get a profile that has not logged in for a month or more, because Postcrossing puts them inactive automatically. Of course, you could get them on day 29 of absence, it has happened. But you can’t tell if they are just busy and will come back, or they won’t. We all dislike losing postcards to people who disappear, but I agree that choosing to skip an address is not a solution.
(Twice a month you say? Then maybe someone will skip a member in country X because sending to that country is more expensive, then member Y because they have an annoying wishlist… The two opportunities are gone, and then you get one those ghost profiles you described, and then you wish you had more opportunities to skip. Very slippery…)

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As disappointing as it is, yes people like that are out there. This happened to me a while back and I was very frustrated when they didn’t receive my card. I noticed they hadn’t logged on in 2 weeks but I decided to send on more. Again no response! I feel like they probably have both… they haven’t logged on in months now. It’s a little sad and I wish they would’ve gone inactive or at least registered remaining cards. But you really can’t dwell on it. I have to agree with what’s said above, it’s probably best not to have that option but I also understand how frustrating it is.

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At what point of inactivity does Post crossing stop sending that person’s address out?
I can understand the frustration of getting an address from someone who has not online in over a month.

I would absolutely not want that!
It’s inclusiveness is what makes Postcrossing so special. Allowing members to decide whether or not they want to send a postcard to another member really does open a can of worms. It leads to discrimination and exclusion.

Drawing conclusions from the last time someone logged in isn’t helping anyhow. Someone who hasn’t logged in for a months might do so right after you send your card. Or someone logged in 5 minutes ago might vanish for the next months or maybe forever (that happened to me recently). People don’t log in for all sorts of reasons. Some might lose interest and not possess the kindness to register the cards they still receive. Some might be sick, have an accident, go through a horrible divorce, have sick family members, got overburdened with work, etc…

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I also know this feeling when you get an address of a seemingly “abandoned” profile… :slightly_frowning_face: But I never kept track if these cards really don’t get registered. :thinking:

I just had a quick look at my expired cards: There are 21. Only one member hasn’t logged in since I sent my card, most others have been online recently.

@ck12074, have you kept track if this feeling that you’re sending a card “into the void” is realistic?

P.S.: To be clear, I don’t support this suggestion - like others wrote, it’s against the inclusiveness of this wonderful project (and would open Pandora’s box).

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A button that would allow us to reject an address would unfortunately result in lots of postcrossers being rejected just because of the country they live in :cry:

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I don’t know if this is within the rules… If you draw an address, you’re agreeing that you’ll send a card. And with your suggestion you’re postponing this deal, without knowing why the user hasn’t logged in for awhile. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

If you have to wait very long for your cards to arrive, and don’t log in when a card finally arrives, your address is given out by the system whatsoever. And then you have to wait longer for a card to arrive because the sender waits until you log in again? Sorry, but that doesn’t sound fair to me.

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Well, of course you have to be very careful about this and give the adressee the benefit of doubt… But sometimes it is pretty obvious that a postcrosser “is no longer with us”. That may change again, of course - but if I was returning to this hobby after let’s say half a year, I wouldn’t be angry if it tokk another 30 days before some card due to me arrives…

This is not true. You can see many profiles whose last seen 7 years ago, 6 years ago, 5 years ago. In 2019 I sent 2 cards to 2 ghostcrossers. Both cards were deleted in 2020. I can see their profile still exist in postcrossing until now.

I don’t expect postcrossing to delete ghostcrosser accounts. All I hope is they register the cards to ghostcrossers after 6 months or even 1 year.

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Would it be acceptable to message that person, and ask if they are still active, because you’ve just drawn their address?
It might kick-start them into logging in again… life may have got busy and they’ve forgotten about us! :flushed:

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Based on my experience with ghostcrossers, they never reply to private message.

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Right, it doesn’t always happen… though it should… and it does!
Only recently had a case like that: 60 days inactive when I first drew the address - and not a single card registered! - remaining inactive for another 3-4 months - and then the profile was deleted.
No idea really how the system decides which profiles to delete and which to leave…

I don’t think the system does anything when it comes to deleting accounts but I could be wrong. Members have the option to terminate their accounts and when they do, any postcard that was travelling to them gets automatically registered by Postcrossing.

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One of my receivers isn’t seen already 29 days. I’m not very happy about that.

That shouldn’t be possible, as the system is said to only give out address es of members who were active in the last 30 days.
@meiadeleite can you confirm?