Three weeks is much too soon. I have postcards within the USA that take 30 days to arrive. I’ve received cards from Russia, Turkey and China after 60 days on average. Turkey was over 100 days. Most of mine are now taking over 30 days since USPS has been undermined.
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I have never been asked to register a card I’ve not received. I have never contacted anyone to ask if they received my card. I did once send a second card to someone after it expired and the second one was received and registered.
Just a thought, I always upload my cards so if the card is uploaded but not received, if someone then registers it even though it got lost, as least the card can be viewed?
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I’m not sure I understand what you mean, but if I do then yes, the only time someone wanted me to register their card that didn’t arrive (in the end it did, at 167 days!) they were trying to argue that at least I would see the picture that way!
When you register the card, the system doesn’t know if it’s in your hands, or someone sent you the number…
(Sometimes when people are away from home but haven’t been inactive/something arrives anyway, someone at home will send them the number so they can register it. That is nice actually, as the card has arrived but the recipient is temporarily absent).
If you send a message to ask the person if he or her received the postcard you just spoil the surprise 
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I must confess I several times asked people if they could register my card (or check if it came with no ID or wrong one) when it expired a lot (more than 150 days) and when recipient’s account was active like months ago. I was a bit frustrated because of amount of expired cards which is not an excuse for me of course. Then I accepted that this is a part of postcrossing too.
Now I checked this topic and it seems I made one more mistake (which is against the rules too) registering the card I didn’t get. I got an envelope from India with only letter in it and the envelope was a bit damaged and closed with stapler so I thought that the card was taken from it. I wrote it in the message to sender while registering the card. Then I checked his profile. He is new in postcrossing, has empty profile and two other sent cards are without images. Does this seem like a grave mistake if mine? I wonder what should I have done instead?
Don’t worry, I don’t think that’s a serious mistake. Perhaps you could have contacted the postcrossing team and ask if you should register it or not. They will see it is a new member, and maybe they would’ve told to also register it and kindly tell there should be a postcard too.
I have received a paper image, from a new member, and I registered it (because this advice I got). If that would have been older member, I think I should’ve not registered it. But I like this, that new members are treated with a little extra kindness.
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You are living in a very central country in Europe, so that mail should be delivered fast to your country.
It would never come to my mind, to ask if you already received my card.
So, no it’s not rude.
And yes, I’m also having expired postcards. But that’s life.
Just came across this thread and feel like it fits my current “problem”… Earlier today I received a message from a member in Czechia, requesting that I register their postcard as it’s expired. I’m not a 100% sure and will have to check once I get home from work, but the user name and profile picture did look very familiar… so if I’m not mistaken, that very same user has already sent me pretty much the same message twice before! Both times I kindly replied that in accordance with the postcrossing rules I will not register a postcard I did not receive and that lost postcards, although unfortunate, are part of the game. Over time, a lot of the postcards I sent expired as well, but it never crossed my mind to ask the recipient to register a postcard they probably never received, let alone three times!
Quite honestly, this is kinda annoying… what would you do in this case?
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If the request sounds too demanding, I’d just ignore it.
If the request is more polite, I’d feel like a broken record: that the card hasn’t arrived, that it’s against the rules to register cards you haven’t received, but that the sender is welcome to send you a second card just in case.
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This happened to me and I was just deleting the emails or responding that it hadn’t arrived yet etc., but in the end the user’s nagging just got too much . I took some advice on this forum and ended up referring it to the Postcrossing team.
I’ve no idea what was said or done, but I’ve not heard from the user since.
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While the repeated request wasn’t overly demanding or impolite, it’s still kinda annoying to play the broken record game… I sent a message back telling that user once again that I will not register a postcard I didn’t receive… I mean, what’s so hard to understand about that? If I still get another message about that, I’ll report them to the postcrossing team…
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I have a feeling that either the user doesn’t keep track on whom he already sent a message or that they think persistence is key (“steter Tropfen höhlt den Stein”). But yes, a referral to the postcrossing team will.most likely put an end to it.
It happened to me only once, the first message I ignored (which is very hard for me), the second one I replied politely. The card arrived a few weeks later!
Hi everyone,
Hope this is the right place, sorry to make a whole new topic for this.
I have a traveling postcard to Germany right now. These usually take less than a week to arrive, sometimes even 2 days only, so when I saw that this one had been travelling for 40+ days, and as I saw the recipient had 2k+ postcards, I thought, “maybe they missed registering my card”.
So I messaged the person with my ID just to ask and check, in case maybe they missed or forgot to register it. And they answered by saying that basically they hadn’t received it, but I have no idea why they decided to still register it!
This has never happed to me. I don’t know how to react, that was not my intent at all. What shall I do? Send a new postcard?
I happen to have kept a picture of the back of this card, so I could send it to them?
They had a confusing reaction, I don’t know why someone would register a card they haven’t received yet.
Thank you in advance for your tips!
I think most probably seeing the postcard ID the recipient might have thought that you are asking them to register it. To avoid such instances, the best practice would be to ask them politely if the received the card or not without sharing the ID.
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Yeah, that’s what I figured afterwards. I should’ve only descripted what it looked like. 
But that doesn’t really tell me what I can do now
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Once it is registered, I think there is nothing to be done. You can share the back of the card if you wish and hope that the actual card will arrive sooner or later.
You can also consider resending another card, however that is completely up to you.
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Okay, thank you very much! That’s what I’ve done 
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There’s no point asking the question “have you received my postcard?” if you don’t provide the ID & a description.
I’ve gotten a bunch of emails over the last few years that just ask that question & they provide NO info for me to check - it’s not very helpful if you actually want the person to check.
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Description yes, ID no, imhO.
If one doesn’t have the card, one doesn’t need it. If one has it already, then one should know the ID anyway (and from medium/small sending countries it’s not like one has tens lying around). If there are issues with the ID, one hopefully knows about the search-help provided by postcrossing.
So I never give the ID when asking after ~100 days, just the description of the card (which should be helpful, indeed)
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