Postcards from Austria to US hardly delivered

Dear PC colleagues,
since beginning of October I had many addresses from the USA to send my postcards to. However hardly any of these cards reached the recipient. As of today I have 77 traveling postcards, 40 of those are somewhere on their way to the USA (7 expired). Even cards to Russia and China have been received in the meantime, only the cards to the USA remain as travelling. Am I the only one or do others experience the same delay with cards to the USA?
Thanks in advance for your feedback hereā€¦
I wish you many interesting cards in your mailbox and many enthusiastic hooray messages from card recipients!
Kind regards,
Sabina

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Hello,

These posts will give you some ideas

If you ask my opinion I will say that my mail to US arrives in timely manner. I am always confused when people complaining about US :smiley:

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Another possible reason for slow travel times within the U.S. ;Amazon

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/28/amazon-missed-mail-rural-towns/

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Could it be the cards are being missent? Do you write an acronym (USA, US) for the country which could be confused for another?

Iā€™m experiencing same. Some cards to USA arriving normaly within 15-30 days. But lots expired. One was delivered after six month. Iā€™m facing this problem since 2022. Iā€™m writing address carefully avoiding extra signs and marks not related to address in address area. To make address clearly readable by human or machine
I really wish someday Postcrossing will implement feature to register card even after one year. Still not loosing hope my expired cards to USA will be delivered. But some of them gone from system. Itā€™s sad
P.S If i see unit or apt# on second line i will write it on first address line. Iā€™ve read article suggesting not to use address line 2. Donā€™t remember if I had problems in this case. But in general I think current problem not in address writing.

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Do you write your postcard ID under the address? The USPS sorting machine can read that as a zip code and sort it to send to the wrong place.

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Im having opposite direction problems. I have ALOT of cards still in transit, to countries that usually receive and register fast that are going expired. ive had 10 in last 2 months which is very unusual. Something def up with our usps.

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I agree - the Post article is very good and gets into a lot of good detail.

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I sent 7 postcards in the US back in Oct and they havenā€™t arrived to their destination yet. It seems as soon as Oct arrived, all my USA mail slowed drastically. Iā€™m wondering if itā€™ll resume to normal after January.

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Iā€™ve had a couple of USA domestic cards that never made it out of many. These days, they seem to be taking twice as long as Iā€™d expect, but arrive. Iā€™ve had more issues with slow registrations than (presumed) delivery.

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I do not write the ID# anywhere near the address, also I obey the rules, that roughly 1 cm needs to be free at the bottom of the cardā€¦ I write in upper case letters and take care to write legible. However from the answers so far, I get the impression, that it is a wider observation, not only my cards not arriving.

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Im in Washington state USA and all my cards have been delayed, It usually takes 2-3 business days to go one state over and my cards have been taking up to 2-4 ish weeks (and some longer)

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Does it make a difference in delivery? I noticed a lot of US addresses are written that way but I feel very uncomfortable writing in all upper case, so have been ignoring that. I do write the addresses in print script so I thought there shouldnā€™t be any differenceā€¦?

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Another consideration: your cards are also going to experience an incredible delay to & within the USA during the month of December due to the high influx of holiday cards & packages needing to be delivered!

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Iā€™ve experienced the same thing, Sabina. And not just recently. Pretty sure it is nothing on my end that is the problemā€¦

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Hello Sabina!
Iā€™m sorry to hear that your cards wonā€™t arrive, either.
Mine - btw, Iā€™m from Austria, too - also wonā€™t arrive.


Iā€™ve to admit, that I did sent the 2nd card in this list (the one at ā€˜3 daysā€™ travelling time) with a priority label, for which I paid an extra fee (it really was ridiculous cheap - so I didnā€™t mind it.)
Best wishes and letā€™s hope that all our cards out there will be delievered quickly. :slight_smile:
Andreas

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Iā€™ve had up to 5 out of 10 cards travelling to the USA at once. I only started sending again mid-September after a long break and so far, only two cards to the USA have arrived. The first took 10 days, the second 22 days. I still have 5 travelling, though one has recently expired. The recipient hasnā€™t registered anything almost 2 months, however.
That does still leave me with 4 cards, travelling between 8 and 29 days. Even postcards to China and Russia have arrived in the meantime, when those are usually notoriously slow.

I donā€™t have repeated countries on, so I have no idea why I keep getting so many US addresses. Iā€™m used to having two, sometimes three travelling at once to the countries with many users, but never more than that. Up until now.

My cards from Europe have taken about two weeks on average to arrive this month, some a bit faster others a bit longer. Thanksgiving is a major holiday, so that may have delayed things a few days in terms of American menber registrations.

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Cards to the US are generally my longest traveling from Australia. It used to be China, Ukraine and Russia but Russia isnā€™t an option for us atm and China and Ukraine are infrequent (but China still quicker now than the US).
My biggest issue with cards to the US is that all but 2 Ghostcrossers (and there has been over a dozen) Iā€™ve had have been to US addresses and I dread sending cards there fearing Iā€™ll just be watching their login dates stretch into weeks then monthsā€¦ :slightly_frowning_face:

To USPS mail, it does not have to be uppercase, whatever you are comfortable with is fine. :blush:

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