Receiving more cards than you send

Hello!

I am quite new and from my understanding I will only receive a postcard once I have sent a postcard and the receiver has registered my postcard, and it will be counted as “sent”. So the numbers of postcard that I receive should be lower than the numbers of postcard sent. But why currently I have 17 received postcard while I only have 15 sent postcard? Postcrossing is giving me some bonus postcards?

Hello @lingch4n Welcome to the forum. I moved your question to this Topis and here you’ll find the answer :puzzled:

40+

This will balance out. I have more cards travelling right now. A lot of them to users who are today as well in the plus, ofcourse they where not when I got the address.

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I had more received than sent for a while but now I am exactly even. I am new since October.

I think a lot depends on how long it takes Traveling cards to arrive.

I have 1 card traveling to Russia for 48 days so far. And others for a long time as well. So my address would have been given out and I received cards faster than I am sending.

3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Much more sent cards than received

As I haven’t read the whole thread, I don’t know if anyone from the team has ever answered any questions in here, but here is Paulo’s answer from a different topic.

Why your account is selected many times on the same day

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Hi,

I have started about 2 months ago. At the same time as my daughter (same adress, different name and account).

I have 9 sent, 6 travelling and 16 received
She has 9 sent, 3 travelling and 6 received.

Im a bit worried it has gotten mixed up and Im getting extra cards instead of my daughter.

I don’t think it’s possible as the addresses are given to a user, not looking where the receiver lives (unless the sender doesn’t send to their own country).
I believe there are cards on their way to your daughter.

It depends on so much where the cards are travelling from, and does the sender mail the card the same day etc.

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Like you I started about 2 months ago, I have sent 9, have 1 traveling and have received 12. The traveling one was only requested and posted after the 12th card had been received.

I thought I should have received fewer than I had sent.

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There are certainly cards travelling to your daughter. Maybe they come from a coutry with a slow postal service.

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Your profile and your dauther’s profiles are separate, so they won’t get mixed up. Just the same way as your profile won’t be mixed up with another user in your area (or somewhere else).

Sometimes we receive more cards than we send. You can read more about it in this thread:

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Does anyone have the same or knows why postcrossing is doing that? Don’t get me wrong because I really enjoy every single postcard but I also wish to enjoy them every now and then instead of having nothing for a month or two and then receiving six of them almost at the same time!

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@Via_Soy I moved your post to this Topic and please read also in the Topic that @borealis mentioned

Hi Silwia, There are a number of factors that affect this - #1 is how many cards you choose to send - your address is given out once your card is received by the person you sent it to. There is a rhythm to this in the algorithm for sure.

#2 - It depends where the cards are travelling to or from. There have been regular postal delays during the pandemic & so cards take longer, but cards to some countries generally take longer than some. Like cards to Russia & China take longer to arrive than those to Germany for example.

One of the ways you could change this situation for yourself, is if you sent more cards in total to increase the number of cards you can send.

For example, we both started on Postcrossing around the same time and I’ve now sent almost 300 cards & can have 14 cards travelling at any one time and it works for me.

There are many ways to participate in Postcrossing & you can decide how you want to participate. Good luck & enjoy!

P.S. you can also do more direct swaps & games in Forum too if you want to send & receive more cards.

Yes, this happens often. I don’t mind it, though! :slight_smile:

Not sure, if I’m the only one who has this wish: When one of my cards is registered, my address is back in the pool immediately.

Could there be an extra check box in the settings that allows me to slow down the process and let’s say that my address will be back in the pool a few hours/days/a week later?

I can’t help but feel uncomfortable when I have more received than sent. I’m not a quick writer and I certainly do not draw 10 addresses a week.

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I am also facing this issue. Currently, I have two more received cards than sent. And all my cards have been travelling for 30+ days, I am afraid that now they will reach all simultaneously and then I will get lots of cards in a week or so. I wish the distribution was more even.

It seems that the only way for me is to send cards with a break in between and hope that all my cards follow the same pattern when received.

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I guess you could play around with the inactive mode. When your account is inactive your address goes not back to the pool. I’m not sure if it makes a change if you only switch your account to active for a hour or so.


The last days I always had one more received than sent, but then two cards arrived, but only one of my travelling cards got registered ( or vice versa) Now I hope that the next travelling card get registeted before I got a new postcard to register.

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You don’t need to feel bad about having more received than sent. Your address won’t be given out again until your sent number is higher again. But I agree it is a bit weird receiving so many postcards at once. I am not sure when exactly the algorithm changed because I wasn’t very active. However, it definitely didn’t behave like this a few years ago. The stream of postcards felt more consistent but there were probably some fairness issues because I had more received than sent for years.

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Go inactive. I started to do that. It doesn’t quite solve the issue because anyway the moment you go active your address goes out a million times, but if you time it well (and there’s not way to tell when the optimal time is) it could slow it down a bit. I only have 2 more received than sent now - sometimes it is up to 10-11. Of course, I could get 8 cards in the next couple of days and boom, back up I am.
Anyway it doesn’t matter, it’s just a game :slight_smile:

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