That’s good to know. My first sent card was registered 3 weeks ago, so I was hoping something would have arrived by now. I’ve already done a few swaps, both domestic and international, and all those cards have arrived within a week. I guess I just need to be a little more patient! 
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I’ve noticed my cards from The USA to the southern hemisphere take much longer than to European countries. My postcard to Hong Kong took about 29 days and my one to Australia is just hitting 20 days now. I hope that you receive some soon! 
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Out of the 16 cards that I’ve sent, ten have been registered, with the shortest taking six days and the longest 23 days (which was the closest country to me!). In all likelihood it’s just my anticipation getting away from me, but since I’ve already received cards from direct swaps it makes me wonder if my name hasn’t been in the pool/algorithm that much, if people have received my name and address but not sent the card yet, or if they come from a place where the postal service is a bit slow. Either way I’m optimistic that I’ll receive something this week (I hope!).
I’ve been obsessed since I became active here, sourcing interesting post cards, starting a journal to keep track of everything, getting ready to announce my first lottery and swap for a couple of rare locations I’ll be travelling to soon (since at most I’ll only be able to send seven cards officially in Travel Mode)….it’s disappointing (yet understandable) that I haven’t received any cards yet.
I wonder what’s the longest time it took someone to receive their first postcard, after the first sent postcard got registered?
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I noticed, that since a while when I request an address, I sometimes get a Postcard myself just a few days later. Which must mean that I get a postcard for every address I requested.This confuses me, because I always liked the system that you get a card after another person registered yours. But now its liked I write a row of postcards and then get overwhelmed by incoming postcards instead of staying excited while waiting and so on.
And I also see the problem that you can cheat very easily, for example a Person requests lets say 10 card and dont has to send them, to get postcards themselves.
Sorrry, if my English sounds like potato, Im not sure, how I can explain it the best. I hope you understand my problem.
My question is, is this a bug, oder changed postcrossing its system and if so, is it possible to make my own settings that I have it the way before? To be honest, like this its not really the fun I felt like it was before.
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(Post was moved here by moderator.)
I don’t believe you can change the settings any ways yourself.
But, from what country does the cards arrive? Thinking it comes only few days later, it should be from very fast country, if it’s related to you sent (but not registered). (And then there could more arriving later?)
Can it be just coincidence?
Or, there was cards travelling to you that expired, and someones gets your address then in “wrong” time? Not related to your travelling ones in any ways?
I have thought, after a while, when you seem like a member who sends cards/is reliable, the address giving starts to “think” that your travelling are somehow counted. But this doesn’t matter, unless one sends in certain time slots and wants cards only after that. (Like if you send this week, but want cards only after two weeks → then you can keep your account inactive until you are ready to receive the cards.)
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Now, quickly looking at your sent and received, you have for example sent many card on 6th June, and received three on 8th June. I believe you meant this?
But, those cards you received on 8th June, are sent on 3rd, 14th and 16th May, so not on the date you sent the cards.
But, you also sent many cards on 14th April. Your address was given several times then as well, but these you have received during a long period of time, not after few days.
So to me looks like mainly coincidence.
But, maybe you could test only taking one or two address in a day, if it changes something?
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I don’t think the system has changed. It just happens now and then that you receive more than you send.
Since today I have more received than sent …
If you want to prevent from receiving more cards until your sent cards arrived, you could set your account on “inactive”, and back to active when you feel it’s time/okay to receive some again.
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I wish I had your problem. I have sent 18 cards (12 registered, 6 traveling), but I’ve only received 2. Others with a similar start point to mine don’t seem to have such lopsided stats.
I personally send a postcard once a week, in average, and I do that in a quite regular way. And these postcard also get registered regularly. But I RECEIVE cards in an unusal irregular way, meaning: When I look into my received cards list, I can see that the algorithm shows my address to other users only once per month, but then it shows my address to four or five users on the same day. As a result, I tend to receive postcards only once per month but then receive 3-5 cards within 2-3 days, and then nothing for the rest of the month.
It’s like it’s sleeping a whole month, then waking up for me one day and then sleeping again for a month… Does this happen also to other users here?
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This is what it’s been like for us in rarer countries all along. Welcome to the club.
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I think there was also a topic about receiving mail in batches but can’t find it so maybe it was this.
One reason can be (I think this was sometimes mentioned), there is too many inactive members?
So they send, but don’t receive. They need addresses, and inactive addresses aren’t given, so the active ones must be given.
Like lately, when Chinese addresses were not given, some of them still kept sending, some from multiple accounts, having sent hundreds more than receiving. I don’t know how much this still can affect, if at all. But I think in such similar situations, if you were normally sent one or two cards, it then can be 3-4 or even more at that time when your address is given.
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The same problem bothers me for a few months already! I don’t know if it is a bug or not, but I think that is a problem, and moderators never say if it can be fixed or not.
It’s not only rarer countries. It also happens to me and I’m surely not from a rare country.
Sadly the algorithm seems to work this way:
If your sent number exceeds your received number your address might be given out at least the number of cards up to the last card that arrived or to all the currently traveling cards. The good thing is: this way also expired cards are taken into account.
The not so good thing: the algorithm will only restart this procedure, if your sent cards exceeds your received ones again. And this can take its time, especially if your cards are traveling slooooowwwly.
So yeah this time I got lucky and the cards didn’t arrive all in the same 3 days like last time, but took their time. And I hope it stays this way. Though I’m currently also in this rhythm of getting the cards sent roughly once a month.
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Be aware that there are still many countries with mail suspensions to other countries. So this happens way more often and to all countries as years ago 
I dont know what is wrong with my profile but I have 15 sent and 9 received for now 
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Don’t worry, there are definitely more on the way! Some postcards travel longer
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This is not a complain but I got only 14 sent registered ( and 6 travelling), somehow I received the 16th today. I’m not sure why I received 2 extra ones. Could it be the system ran out of addresses to give out? But so many postcards are registered every day
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@jtan I think the answer to your question about the system possibly running out of postcards is yes. That’s one reason. And this certainly seems to happen around WPD in October. I know my address was given out in bucketloads last WPD and I ended up with quite a big difference, with received being much higher than sent. Once you have that difference then the system won’t give your address out until the difference is resolved (by you sending more postcards and having them registered).
I was also going to say that it’s possible that previous postcards to you had initially expired (after 60 days travelling) and then your address had been drawn by another member who sent you a postcard, but then the long-travelling postcard does eventually get delivered. This also puts your received numbers ahead of your sent. But I can see from your stats that you have not received any long-travelling postcards. So it’s not this scenario in your case.
I’m no expert in this, but whatever the reason, it’s not unusual and it’s not a problem. You might just have to wait a while (and send more cards of your own) until you receive many more incoming cards. 
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Thanks for the explaination. I didn’t think of there could be peaks of people requesting address 
I’ll wait for the travelling ones to arrive to make the number balanced
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