Reminder email when cards expire

Postcrossing Suggestions
1

I currently have 5 expired cards to Russia. Most of the people to whom the cards have been sent have not been online for 2-3 months. I can now message them all and ask if they’ve had my postcard. Or just let it go. But I don’t think all five postcards really didn’t arrive.

But it would be better (i think) if the recipients would receive an email from Postcrossing.

The system sees when cards expire to those people. It would be nice if an e-mail was sent from PC to the recipients with a reminder to check whether you have registered all received cards.

That it’s okay if you want to pause or stop PC, but still finish what you were doing and register the last received cards if you have them. And that you alsof should register postcards if you don’t like them.
The link to the form if you have received postcards without ID. And tips on what to do if you really haven’t received the cards.

It prevents irritations between postcrossers that people send emails to ask if the card has arrived.
Or that the recipients ask for the ID to register without the card arriving. An email from PC is a bit more neutral and logical than when postcrossers themselves start sending messages to everyone who should have received cards from them.

It doesn’t have to be spam, I would think of one or two emails. Maybe 1 between 60 and 100 days,
and an email at 300 days, so just before the year is over and the ID will be removed.
I think that in such an email you can indicate how many cards have expired and from which countries (without the ID of course).

Update 17.10.22 / 15:15
Link to the poll about registering cards and expired cards.

Update 13.10.22 / 12:30

Just a quick example:
Of course it can be made different/better, this is just an example.

Hey Postcrosser!

We see that some cards sent to you are not registered yet.
We don’t know if the cards got lost in the mail
or if you might have received them but not (yet) registered.

It concerns 1 card from China and 2 cards from Germany.
The cards are sent on/after 10-06-2022.

This is just a reminder to ask you to make sure you have registered all the cards you have received. Sometimes in a hurry, the card stays somewhere. The sender would like to know that the card has arrived. And it would be great if as many received cards as possible were registered.

Would you please check to see if you have the card somewhere?
We all have a lot of things to do. Maybe the card was accidentally overlooked
among the papers or with other cards or maybe you forgot it.
That can happen to all of us, don’t worry.

  • Did you really not receive the postcard? Then you don’t have to do anything.
    We hope that the postcards still reach you and then you can still register them.
  • Did you receive/find the postcard? Please register it.
  • Do you have a card without ID? On this page you can get help to find the right ID.

Do you currently have no time/interest to participate further in postcrossing?
You can set your account to inactive. You can activate it again when you want to participate again.

Thank you for checking to see if you’ve received any cards you haven’t registered yet.
Have a nice day.

47 Likes
3

@Molletje I think that is a great idea! :grinning:

@linos203 In that case there could be the country and maybe the last 3 numbers of the ID. Or a link to the profile of the sender. :relaxed: I guess there will be some practical solution.

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4

I’ve currently got 4 expired cards to Russia this year before we stopped sending mail to them & they usually are my highest expired card country although the US is surpassing them lately sadly.

I don’t think emails from Postcrossing to these card recipients is ever going to solve the problem. Some of those cards are likely lost given what I’ve learned about the Russian postal system & our postal systems in general.

And for the ones not lost, people either became impatient & lost interest, had life crises, stop participating due to finances, lost them or had some other circumstance that resulted in cards not being registered.

That’s just part of the process in Postcrossing. Yes, it’s frustrating, but once we mail the cards, they are out of our hands & control & I’ve found accepting that mostly helps me let go of them.

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5

This is not a good idea. What about members who receive 100+ postcards per month and travel times are long, often even more than 60 days. Will you then receive about 100 reminder messages per month? What’s the point?

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6

I have sent 8 cards to Russia in the last year and three of these have expired. I currently have 5 traveling to Russia (out of 10 cards) and I am not hopeful as the postal service seems really hit and miss. Since many countries ceased posting to Russia it appears to have pushed up how often I am pulling Russian addresses because we can still send them from the UK. Despite having ticked the option to not send multiples to the same country I have pulled four Russian addresses in the last two weeks. At around £3 a card to send (postage alone is £1 85) I am finding this a bit frustrating. I don’t think reminders would work as I don’t think the issue is postcrossers not registering cards. I just don’t think the cards are being received.

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7

Hm, to be honest, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

There are people who registers the cards as soon as they get them - they don’t need such reminders.

There are people who gave up Postcrossing for any reason - they don’t care about such reminders.

There are people who cannot register the cards, because they have currently no access to Internet, are in hospital or even worse, they are dead - the reminder won’t reach them.

And as @ravishing said - what about people who receive a lot of cards with a long travel time? I would be extremely annoyed by this after a short time and maybe give up Postcrossing just because of that.

I’m sure reminders won’t solve the problem as people who don’t care any longer about the received cards are just one part. In fact, I think this could maybe only be helpful for the people who simply forgot to register a postcard. But how many of all the unregistered cards are really just forgotten ones?

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8

No, you don’t get 100 reminder mails.
You get only one mail. Maybe one at f.ex 75 days or 100 days and one at 300 days.
With a list of all the cards postcards who are expired.

And most cards just arrive in 60 days. So if you get an email on day 100,
that can’t really be that many cards. Otherwise, maybe something else is going on.

And about that it doesn’t help or that people get irritated from one reminder.

Postcrossers now send emails to people themselves to ask if their card has arrived. So they get a lot more messages. Some postcrossers are already writing about it in their profile.

And sometimes it won’t have any effect, that’s possible. But every card that does get registered because of the reminder is one. If you participate in postcrossing you also have obligations and registering the cards is one of them.

Is 1-2 reminders really that bad?
It’s just a friendly reminder to check to be shore.
No blame or warning or something negative.

And the people who get/send 60-100 cards can easily overlook one by accident.

We could also test it for a few months to see if it works.

There are so many reasons not to register cards.
You can also just put it somewhere and forget it. A reminder can help.
Not everyone who doesn’t register cards really doesn’t care anymore.
It doesn’t always happen on purpose.

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I don’t want to get reminders about postcards that never reached me.

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10

@hankadl You don’t get that.

You will receive a reminder to check if you have registered all your received cards.
If you’ve done that, there’s nothing to worry about, right?

Why should cards expire to you?
If you have your address correct in your profile and your mailbox is easy to find,
there is little reason that things will go wrong.

No Expired Cards = No Reminder.

1 Like
11

Sometimes there was information that everyone has expired cards.
So, everyone would get this reminder.

I’m not completely opposed to this, and agree that every registered card is better.

I have 11 expired to Russia. But, I think many of these didn’t go there.
Some expired to Germany, where at least three are prepaid. I think German post doesn’t always understand this, and I don’t know what they do with those. (I try not to send these there anymore).

So things like this can happen even when the address is right and mail box clearly where it normally is supposed to be.

But, on the other hand, I have asked after my mail, and it has been in a husbands pile, in a car etc. and once they said they definitely didn’t receive it. I asked maybe they just in case could look, and they did, and they did receive it, but didn’t even open yet. So there is some mail that is received and forgotten, and then this style of reminder could help.

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12

I also wouldn’t want to receive a notification with an ID, I would be disappointed to know where the postcards come from and if they don’t arrive, it would be all the worse.

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Of course you don’t get the ID.

14

I edited my 1st post and added an example.

15

Exactly. So if I receive the reminder, it means there is a card for me on the way (probably lost). It does happen sometimes even if you have a correct address in your profile.

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16

^ I feel the same way. I just accept it is part of the postcrossing experience.

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17

This. I would not like to know if there were cards on their way to me that were lost, either.

If cards I send expire it’s just part of Postcrossing. I am very happy if one gets registered before it completely falls off the list (had that happen once), but since after 60 days the slot is open again anyways, it’s also not a problem if they don’t get registered anymore.

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18

The email does not automatically mean that the card has been lost in the mail.
It is only a question to check whether you have registered everything.

It can happen to anyone that you receive a card, put it on the table for a moment,
put something else on top of it by accident and never think about the card again.
Or that you put it on the shelf and forget it.

The card may have already arrived. The card can also be on its way and arrive later.

In some countries, sending cards is very cheap. In other countries it is more expensive or just expensive. People also spend a lot of time and attention to send a nice card.
Then you want to know that postcards arrive. That you don’t do it for nothing.
If many cards expire, people may also lose motivation.

Maybe it doesn’t matter to you whether a card arrives or not.
But maybe it is important to others.

3 Likes
19

Same! I know sometimes cards to me expire, because sometimes postcrossers send a 2nd card and it arrives. I have zero patience with people sending me messages asking if I’ve received their card. If I had, it would be registered. And I would have even less patience with official Postcrossing sending messages like that! It’s not good for anything. Lost cards happen, they are part of the process, as someone said above.

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Lost cards are part of the process. Accept it and move on. Stop assuming people received them and are just not registering them. That may be the case, but it’s unlikely. Most likely they simply never received it. And FYI: PC DOES send an email when a recipient’s expired cards are out of the ordinary.

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21

Yes, losing cards is part of the process.

But… A lot of people here also send a lot of mail outside the official postcrossing.
And never as many cards get “lost” as with the official postcrossing.

I think you’d be really surprised how many cards just arrive, but just don’t get registered.

4 Likes