Postcard never registered

What to do if a postcard you mailed was never received. I contacted the postcrosser I sent it to, she still has not received it, it has been well over 30 days and was mailed within the same country

There are two things you can do. You can resend it and hope the second one arrives, or you can continue to wait and see. It’s always possible that the card was lost or destroyed along the way.

2 Likes

I have cards within the same country taking 60 days. Give it time. The postal system is running very behind. At 60 days, an official card will retire and open a new slot for you. I wouldn’t resend until at least 60 days.

2 Likes

It’s been a year and one of my first cards isn’t yet registered and you say 30 days? Wow really, give it some time, it’ll reach its destination finally, rarely cards don’t ger received

30 days are nothing to worry about. We are still living in a global pandemic and the USPS is a mess since the new Postmaster General has taken over. Postcrossing is a lesson in patience.

6 Likes

Exercise patience. The mails are inconsistent now. One card that I mailed went into expired status. Two days later the recipient registered the card.

1 Like

I’ll just show you my recent statistics :crazy_face:
I never resend, I just wait
bandicam 2021-02-08 21-13-09-486

4 Likes

this post made me smile a bit. when you say ‘never registered’ in my mind i was thinking about at least a few months or something, but it’s only been 30 days.
give it some time, there are quite a lot of posts on this forum about mail delivery in the usa. apparently you’re not the only one with cards on the way for a long time.
eventually your card will arrive. or not. it happens sometimes, i wouldn’t worry about it too much.

I’m just curious how long does it take for an expired card to “go away” and when it does, does that person who you sent it too get a new card?

If by “go away” you mean disappear permanently from your sent list, it’s 1 year. After that, the card is gone from the system and can no longer be registered.

When a card expires, your recipient’s address goes back into the pool and is assigned to another person, since the recipient is still due a card.

Oh ok thanks


The postcards from Austria to the US take longer than normal and also expired.

I have the feeling that cards to Russia are faster than cards to the US at the moment. My cards to the US still don’t expire but they are very close to the 60 day mark.

Thank you for all the responses, but I must say that 30 days or more for mail sent within the United States is excessive, even with our current issues here. More than likely it was damaged or lost., I understand that it takes longer to other countries… But I am being patient, was just curious on others experiences

1 Like

Sorry to be the negative one here, but it’s not so rare :slight_smile: About 10 cards I sent last year (out of 70-80 sent -talking only about officials) never made it and I think most of them never will. This month, I have 4 cards that will disappear from the system as they were sent in February 2020.

The last year has been worse than usual, but this always happens to some extent, always has and always will. Most cards arrive, but some will not…

Oh that’s bad, but I’m here one and half year only and I have lost only ome card so I thought it wasn’t usual

1 Like

That’s so lucky! I had a time in the past when I had 10 expired even if there was no pandemic and I lived in the UK where the mail is not that bad. I used to use repeated countries a lot and there was a lot of sending to Russia, which was slow and sometimes things got lost. Now the USA seems more common than Russia and as slow and unreliable as Russia (sorry, people, that’s your postal system not you!). Some of those 10 expired must have arrived in the end but not all. I don’t keep track of those that were lost forever, but 4 in one month (and one that disappeared out of the system in January) will be memorable!

I don’t know, I had penpals when I was a kid (ehm, before the internet ;)) and I was always scared that letters wouldn’t arrive, to me it is a given that some mail will never arrive, though most will. But it’s not that rare that mail is lost.

Plus, we live in even more uncertain times, so in the last 12 months anything arriving anywhere is almost a miracle! :smiley:

Average time for postcards WITHIN the USA now is about 30 days. USPS is still messed up. I’ve gotten several from other states that took that long.

I am a bit surprised that apparently many postcards get lost (forever).
I personally send a second card when the first one is travelling at least 100 days. To be honest, I would feel bad if the card would just be deleted from the system and the recipient never received a card from me. That was my task, after all… I know the task is done with sending 1 card, but for me, the task is only fulfilled when a card has arrived at the recipient.

2 Likes

Do you always resend? Or only if the recipient is active? Fact is that not only the sender has to do their bit but also the receiver. And those ghostcrossers can get lost. Especially those who started Postcrossing just to quit again after one card.

1 Like