This is definitely not the only country with long delays.
I was in Mexico and sent 7 cards from there, from the post office (including one to myself in Texas… bordering Mexico!), and none of them have arrived anywhere in the World. They are expiring on my profile (60 + days). So it is just the way it is right now and I don’t believe we should “banish” anybody. There are enough governmental postal closures already.
If our cards make it fast; we put a smile on someone’s face. If they arrive later, we will still make someone happy, just at a different time. But if we don’t send any, we sure won’t.
I didn’t believe it was a “race” to see who can get the most cards registered. I truly hope it isn’t.
You send cards from Mexico, not to Mexico. The problem are the cards send to China, not from China. Chinese Postcrossers are not banished. They can still participate and send cards from China but their addresses are not given out at the moment because there is an unusually huge amount of postcards already/still on their way to them. Think of it as the whole country being in inactive mode. (Able to request addresses but their own addresses are on hold until they are in active mode again). I hope the backlog clears soon and China can be in active mode again.
I have a question what if only the card sent from February to March was lost. But sent after April ones are all delivered. Are we keep waiting for the data during February and March?
But you will teceive cards. This suspension will not be forever. Paolo said best case in a month things will be back at normal. Once the world can send to China again you will receive all your due cards.
If postcards from a certain time period seemed lost but mail delivery after that period was back to normal, Postcrossing would resume delivery. See the case of mail from Finland to Russia in 2021 for an example of this happening before, and deliveries being resumed.
But chinese postcrossers are receiving the postcards from the backlog. Many of wich are replacement cards for postcards already stuck there. So for one send card from China there are multiple cards on their way to China already. The only Members not having cards traveling to them yet are chinese Newbies, whose first card got registered during the suspension and who have their own country deactivated. But their addresses (and all others addresses) will be given out as soon as China is reactivated.
I see a lot of discussion about what is fair to Chinese users, but not about what is fair to everyone else. Sending postcards costs money and time. There are thousands of postcards stuck in China that aren’t being registered. Unless China post has destroyed them, Chinese users will get them eventually, plus extras. It isn’t fair to expect everyone else to be okay with sending cards into a black hole. What if they are never received? The Chinese users will get replacements but the original senders are just out the money/cards/time. Right now the majority of my expired cards are to China, Russia and Belarus, with still more traveling to Belarus. It’s highly likely that the cards I sent to Russia and Belarus were destroyed and will not arrive. Personally, I don’t want to send more cards into oblivion. The suspension is fair and warranted.
I think the 60-day expiration rule can be removed from this project since it’s useless as the operators can suspend a country only because of longer traveling time.
Are you saying there should be no expiration date? If I send the 20 slots I have available and 15 are never registered (and never expire) then I only have 5 left. Is that fair to me? Paulo has worked out a good system and has already explained how things will improve as your postal system delivers it’s backlog
I’m afraid that when there was no suspension, people who drew a Chinese address might simply refuse to send the postcard because they wouldn’t wanna waste money
Have you ticked the option to have multiple cards travelling to the same countries? Removing this might help you drawing less Russia. Btw, I’m also in Germany and my last cards to Russia took 29, 24, 28, 37 and 27 days.
Same here.
Deactivated the multiple cards option back in February, nevertheless I still have 12 expired cards to Russia, sent between September ‘21 and March’ 22.
To China I still have 4 cards traveling (sent between February and May).
In total 30 expired cards, most of them to members who weren’t online for a long time. I’m sure there’s always a good reason why they don’t come back but as I don’t want to get more and more frustrated I stopped drawing addresses in May and I won’t do it until October I guess.
Hello @surfclub66, Canada Post suspended mail to Russia and Belarus shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. Interesting that USPost hasn’t; especially, as you indicate that mail from you to those countries isn’t getting through.
No doubt China Post is still in the process of clearing backlogs, and apparently in a not-so-chronological order. On the other hand, we have to realize that it is also a result of the address assignment mechanism that more postcards are traveling (and most likely stuck in a processing center) to China than are due for the users. Nothing can be done to speed up postal services, but it seems less so with the rules of quotas and address assignment.
What we’re really dealing with here is not the backlogs per se but our dissatisfaction/frustration and/or waste of money due to long travel times or non-registration. Even though China is suspended on the main site, some people continue to send postcards to China through private swaps while others hold off. Similarly, it’d be good to have this sort of flexibility for official postcard exchanges. One idea that can be gleaned from the discussions above is a separate category of slots for destinations that aren’t postally reliable where different rules apply.
