You can. When I am staying elsewhere in Australia I use travel mode. It reflects accurately on my travel map that the postcard was sent from a different location to my home.
Thank you! I wasn’t sure if that was allowed. My country is so big that it would make sense to use it when I travel within it.
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For the same reason, I also like travel mode within the US. It will put another little blue mailbox on your own map.
Since I had to leave my home in Belarus for the better place (for the well-known reason), I used to send some cards from both Armenia (Yerevan) and Georgia (Tbilisi).
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My country is so small (like most European countries) that the impact on my general stats is very limited, but I like to have several tiny houses on my map that remind me of the places I visited and the people I met. 
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I’m sorry but I don’t think what you did here is correct.
It is true, you are under no obligation to spend money and time on finding postcards and postage when you are travelling to another country. But, if you use the Travel Mode and draw an adress to send from the country you are travelling to, and you have a code from that country, you do have the obligation to send a postcard from that country. That’s what the code is for!
And, NO, this is not a “whatever, people should be thankful they are getting a postcard”. If you don’t want to spend time and money on a postcard in another country, absolutely fine! Don’t draw an adress.
Because otherwise you are just using travel mode to have the “icon” from another country in your profile, and you do not care about who is going to recieve the postcard. And postcrossing is about sending and receiving postcards. All the statics and maps are incredibly nice features, but if you ask for a code of that country, you have to use the postal system of that country. You do have the obligation.
Personally, if I received a postcard with, say, from Germany and with German stamps, but with a Luxembourg code, I would contact Postcrossing inmediatly, because I would find it troubling that I have to register a postcard from a country when it has not come from that country.
Don’t get me wrong, I will always register every single postcard that comes, even if I don’t like it. But registering a code that is not real is an issue.
*I must note: I am aware that an emergency may happen and you can end up sending a postcard from you country with the code of a country you’ve come back from a travel, as an emergency situation. Yes, sometimes life happens, this is not what @_Hawkwind_ is talking about.
Furthermore.
I am now living in Norway. It is possible to manually place the location on travel mode. What’s stopping me from activating travel mode, setting it to a rare country like… Bahamas, and then send postcard from Norway, with Norwegian postage, but a Bahamas code?
That is not fair, should not be allowed.
How is that any different to what you are talking about? No matter that you’ve actually visit the country; if you haven’t send mail from it, just don’t draw an adress to send from said country.
Again. If you want to have something in your computer to monitor your travels, just use google maps or Finding Penguins, or other apps/websites for that. But postcrossing is about mail.
I can only think, if I ever recieve a postcard from a country with a non-matching code, I’d try find a way to report it to the PC team… but I don’t know if there is anything else to do to prevent that.
@paulo @meiadeleite
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Several misconceptions here…
First, you can’t just set your location to a rare country and draw an address in travel mode. You need to connect to a local wi-fi in order to request an address with that country code, as a verification that you’re actually there.
Second, while obviously it’s desirable to have the country code and postmark/stamps match, there is not an actual obligation to do so.
For example, people cross the border from Switzerland to post their cards from Germany, where postage is a lot cheaper.
I understand when people are disappointed about that type of thing, but it’s not a requirement to have the stamp and cpuntry code match.
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This is different case. They don’t use travel mode. They don’t have intention to get rare countries ID.
What is the point of using travel mode if you don’t send card from the country you are travelling in? To get rare countries ID? To make your statistic looks cool?
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Oh, I’m sorry. I set my account to travel mode “Spain” while still in Norway, before I actually flew to Spain (to minimize the amount of mail I will recieve before I came back). But, it is true, I didn’t draw any adresses until I was already in Spain.
That’s why I thought that could be done, because I could settle the travel mode beforehand.
Still. I am not talking about dissapointment on receiving a card with non-matching code and stamps. It is still a card and I’m happy to receive it.
I’m talking about the idea that the code does not matter and you can send a card that says (on the statics) that has been sent from one country but you’ve used the postal system -has been mailed- from another country.
Is not the “matching” per se, is the people using the travel mode to have the postcrossing map as a LOG of the countries they’ve been too, while they are not sending mail from there.
Again, there are many computer features to create maps of places you’ve been too… Postcrossing is NOT for that.
You get a country code because you are sending mail from that country. Otherwise, in postcrossing we could just have a code with the number of the postcard, but not with the country. Just the same code format for everyone. Who cares?
But, we know that that’s not how it works.
And, since the codes are curated by country/territory, it is implied that you are sending from that country. That’s what mail is about.
I insist. You are under no obligation to activate Travel Mode and send mail while you are travelling. Nobody is telling you to do that. But, if you do so and you draw an address, you should send from the place the Poscrossing website says you are.
This is the same attitude as not sending a postcard to someone if you don’t like their profile or not registering a postcard because you didn’t like what they sent you.
You have a responsability when you send or receive a card. You know exactly what compromise you have when you ask for an address while on travel mode.
If someone is not going to send mail from their destination, just enjoy the trip without messing with the postcrossing system for a selfish use.
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When I joined Postcrossing I was disappointed to learn that people were so fussed about the country code, because I thought I could send the many postcards I buy on holiday. But apparently it is a big no-no for many people.
However, @Lhyz , I’d like to point out that Travel Mode is a relatively new feature of Postcrossing, it exists since… 2017 I think? 2018 maybe? For the previous 12-13 years, anyone going on holiday had to use their own country code. What were they supposed to do, not send postcards on holiday? So your anger is very much misplaced.
This is my first ever sent card:
It was bought and sent from Malaysia. I always associated postcards with holidays so it seemed natural for me to do so. I was worried when I realised maybe I did something wrong, but the recipient didn’t care. A lot of people really don’t care. Some do, but they don’t get angry because it’s just a postcard.
Would I have used Travel Mode to send that postcard if it existed? Yes, certainly. But it was not there.
And yes of course it makes sense to use it while it’s there but there/s no need to call people selfish for not doing so, even when it exists (in fact, in my opinion it is selfish to care so much about the country code because you are limiting what others can send. To each their own). I always send with pleasure cards from my holidays or from my native country to people that are not bothered by it.
Also, a lot of people send illustrations or generic cards from card boxes. The country code is totally irrelevant there. I believe there is a website called geopostcards where you are indeed obliged to send from the correct place and send a view card. In Postcrossing you can send a teddybear from Afghanistan or from Chile or from Belgium.
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Others have replied on that point, I never do it because I don’t find it interesting if it doesn’t change the country code. I don’t really care about distance or where the map points to. So you are not “supposed to” but you can do it if you want. Maybe I’d feel differently if I came from a very big country like you mention, but in Europe within the same country it is not very exciting to me (and where I am now, well… I can walk half the country in a day, so 
)
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Okay, first of all, I’d like to point out that I’m not angry nor I’m writing this yelling or scolding at someone.
I am very calmly explaining my opinion on this topic. However, I undestand that this is online writing and most of the time the tone is missing from the message. I hate when people are rude on the comments or start yelling and I do not wish anyone to read what I’ve written in that tone. 
I know that kind of messages are very unsetling and if mine have given anybody that kind of tone, I apologise. There is so much I can emphasize with cursive and short words in caps on this kind of format. 
Second of all. Of course we are not talking about the times before travel mode existed. It didn’t exist, it wouldn’t be fair if people wanted to send PC-mail from their holiday destination, to point out at them for using their home’s code when the Travel Mode wasn’t avaliable.
That’s why it was created; there was a necessity, a problem, now we have a better format, and better oportunities to send mail that reflects the place of origin. That why there is still a “Suggestions” section in the forum. There is always room for improvement.
I would never hold anybody accountable for the mail they sent before travel mode existed.
The same way I said before I undestand something can come up in a trip and you could end up with an address to send from your destination country but you couldn’t send from there and had to send later from home. Things happen, emergencies happen, travel mode didn’t exist before and it’d be very unfair to complain in those situations.
My point is that we have country codes to reflect where the mail is sent to.
We could just have a regular number code and not have the route in a map, just a “Sent” and “Received” with the date and duration.
What’s wrong with that? Nothing.
But it is not how PC works right now.
On the contrary, I don’t care about the country code. This is not about having perfect postcards that “match” card ilustration-postage-PC code-destination, although I know that some people will care about that (but some people take postcrossing very strictly).
The people that set the travel mode and draw addresses from the destination country with no intention on sending from there, it seems to me that they are the ones that only care about the country code.
They care about having reflected on their PC account that they’ve been in that country. But postcrossing is not about wherever you’ve been, is about wher you have sent mail from. That’s what I think is selfish. Using PC statics and system for their travel log and sending mail from somewhere else because they don’t care.
I have a hard time undestading what other reason they may have aside from, well, having the location on their statics.
Say I live in Germany and I am going to travel to Luxembourg. If I know;
- I will not buy postcards in Luxembourg,
- I won’t buy postage in Luxembourg and,
- I won’t send mail from Luxembourg.
…Then, why am I putting travel mode on Postcrossing, a website about sending mail, and asking for an address that will have a code associated and will place my mail as “Sent from Luxembourg”?
I know I will send the cards from Germany, I know this person will recieve a card from Germany, not from Luxembourg. If I know that, why am I asking for an address in Luxembourg?
So I have the location in my map and other people can see where I’ve been? What’s the point of doing that?
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Okay, as you said it’s this online communication because honestly to me you sounded so angry I was like this 
Yes. But to me you sounded like you were saying that it is an unbreakable rule that you must send from the right country and if you don’t do so you should burn in hell (
) so I was giving that example to say that clearly Postcrossing wasn’t created with this golden unbreakable rule in mind, otherwise it would have existed from the start.
But who in their right mind would do that? (and if two people out of 700k - or however many members there are - do that, who cares?). The only thing I found in a post above was someone saying they drew addresses and bought cards somewhere very expensive so they decided to send them from home instead. Not that they use Travel Mode to keep track of travels. There is no indication they do that regularly. Can’t they just have started with the intention of sending cards from Expensiveland, then realise their holiday was so costly that they changed their mind?
Once I was so excited I drew an address on holiday… That I forgot to set Travel Mode. Here I am, sitting in Malta with a GB code. In the end I sent that card when I was back in GB because I was away only a few days anyway, and I had a better fitting card.
Then I had my Travel Mode one and I was on the bus so to kill time I wanted to get addresses for later… but I can’t testify, I was not on local wi-fi so I couldn’t until I was back at my room with wi-fi.
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First of all: Who are you to talk to me like that? The Postcrossing police?
Second: You are wrong in so many ways. I have been doing Postcrossing for almost 7 years now and I definitely know what I’m allowed to do and what not. And the only obligation is to send a postcard to the person whose address I requested previously. There is no rule that the postcard, the code and the stamp have to be from the same country. Up to now I have received several non-matching combinations like postcard and stamp from the Åland Islands and code from Finland, generic card and stamp from France and code from Austria, card and stamp from Moldova and code from Ukraine or card and stap from Italy and code from Russia. I would never ever even think of reporting one of the cards to the Postcrossing team. They have better things to do. Furthermore it is not possible to spoof on Postcrossing. You have to actually log into a local WLAN to generate a code when in travel mode. So in my case I really was in Sweden and Denmark. I even bought cards there. I simply hadn’t enough money left to buy a s**tload of stamps. That’s why I took them home and sent them from Germany. Because I have the obligation to send them out. Period. And to be honest, picky people like you are sucking the joy out of one of my favorite hobbies. This is why I have reduced my activity here. On the one hand you are accusing me and others that we were chasing for rare countries for our statistics and and on the other hand you have set your own bar very high. Please re-sort your claims and expectations to Postcrossing. For most of us it’s a hobby and I personally don’t like feeling pressured to meet the demands of others while indulging in my hobby.
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Oh my god, I’m sorry about that. I hate when people get angry on the forum and I’ve found some cases of downright rude. This is a forum about a hobby, which is mailing, I try to always send a calm attitude, this is for fun, it is not the end of the world.
I tried to avoid anything that would make my writing angry or rude, like “angry emojis 
”, caps letters, a lot of excalmation together “!!!?!?!?!” and things like rude symbols for cursing “F%$”.
I was trying just to write a serious but calm answer about that.
But who in their right mind would do that? (and if two people out of 700k - or however many members there are - do that, who cares?). The only thing I found in a post above was someone saying they drew addresses and bought cards somewhere very expensive so they decided to send them from home instead. Not that they use Travel Mode to keep track of travels. There is no indication they do that regularly. Can’t they just have started with the intention of sending cards from Expensiveland, then realise their holiday was so costly that they changed their mind?
Of course, it seemed the exception. I actually didn’t mean for this to turn more into a “general” debate because most people seem to do Travel Mode as normal.
I was first answering a poster because, on the way they wrote it, it seemed than they planned to just send the cards after from the “cheaper” country. And somebody else was answering like “smart thing to do”. That got me reasoning, why would you do that? Only so you can have the code-location in your profile? Because I don’t see other point.
You are right, it could have been just something that happened on a trip and they didn’t realise the prices. The way it was written, and because they were talking about different destinations; more than one place, it seemed more planned.
If I missinterpreted it, I have no problem on apologising on my mistake.
And, as I said before, I didn’t intend this to have a general tone of “People are doing this with the travel mode ” because it seems from this thread that most people are just enjoying their travels (
) and making other people happy by sending them mail and I was initially answering to a person’s particular case.
I first logged here to say that I’d be travelling to Ireland and Luxembourg next month and I was looking forward to send mail from both countries while travelling.
Should have wrote that first and ignored anyone else. Oh, well.
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But my country is basically the size of all of Europe. So you can surely imagine that each region is like its own country in many ways culturally.
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Actually, it is known that people do that, like from Denmark if they live near the border they go to Germany (I don’t think there is Travel Mode involved). Because spending 90 cents is better than spending 3-4 euros, or whatever the exact prices are. Of course, these people in some way have no choice, that is where they live so they go to the cheaper side to afford Postcrossing.
It doesn’t look like it because this evening I am in the mood for picking apart everything that anybody says, but I learnt over the years to do just that and not get involved in long, complex, misunderstandable conversations. Not tonight
Yah like I said, maybe I’d feel differently if I came from somewhere huge (or lived somehwere huge). But just to say, it is not necessary to do travel mode in the same country, but if you want to then why not 
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OK, I tried looking at this on the forum topics of the travel mode but I don’t see anybody commenting on it. Sorry if this has already been answered.
And, before anything, I am not complaining nor am I angry about what I’m going to write (
). I think I have a weird situation with what happened after I came back from my trip and I am just… puzzled.
Maybe this is normal, but I’d like a second opinion on it.
Apologies because this is going to be long. I feel unless I explain it from the begining, no matter how I asked, it’ll make no sense
So, context: I travelled to Spain on Christmas and stayed until mid Jan. I stopped requesting new adresses around mid November so I had them for the Travel Mode (I’m quite a newbie, so they weren’t too many).
I send the postcard, came back to Norway, all good.
I came back the 22-January, Saturday
I did not have any postcards in my letterbox. I checked just in case. Everything OK. I remember I set my account back to normal the 23-Jan (Sunday) because I arrived late and I wanted to make sure I was “back” before receiving any mail.
Now, if I undestood correctly, the way PC works is that someone requestes an adress, my adress is in a “pool” and gets pulled by someone, and this person sends me a postcard, while my adress goes back at the “end of the queue” in the pool of adresses, to wait until someone requestes it again (and there’s limits regarding postal monitor and etc.). Right??
My first mail was the 28-Jan (Friday*). I received 3 different postcards from Germany, with almost consecutive ID-numbers (for Germany standards, at least).
DE-11395714
DE-11395743
DE-11395835
*They are registered 19-Sat but we don’t have mail on Saturdays.
All sent the same day; 23-Jan (the day I “came back home” for Poscrossing), and received the same day. I am assuming that because there are so many German users three people requested an adress almost at the same time and my adress got drawn 3 times from the same country with such a small difference of ID-numbers. I think it shouldn’t happen with the PC system but maybe the time difference between them was of seconds and I got sorted trice in such a small amount of time. Alright.
But then it happens again on 1st Feb (Tuesday). Two cards from The Netherlands, almost consecutive number of ID. Sent and received the same day.
NL-51544149
NL-51544140
I found it very strange, but didn’t think that much of it. At this point I just assumed there was some kind of glitch. A bit of a pitty because I was hopping that comming back from a trip and having “spent” all my adresses, mine would take a while to circle around PC and I’ll be slowly, slowly receiving mail for the next months. You know, more spaced in time so I had more time to enjoy receiving mail once I’m back home. Oh, well, not the worst.
But then things seemed -more or less- back to normal. I kept receiving some mail, 1-2 cards each week and from different countries, different ID’s, nothing seemed wrong anymore. Mail slows down at the end of February, because I still don’t have a big send/recieve number of cards and my Recieve count was paired with my Sent quite fast (due to the first two weeks of mail recieved). Some cards from Spain arrived and I got some addresses but it is slow (some are expired). By the end of Feb., my count for Received is higher than my Sent and I’m slowly receiving new addresses and sending mail to try and to even things.
BUT THEN.
I recieve my last postcard the 2nd March GB-1488300.
I haven’t received any mail since. The reason why is clear; I had more Recieved postcards than Sent, and all the ones I could have sent were already travelling, so I just had to wait.
Imagine how many postcards I got the first two weeks after I came back - and how fast- that it took me until the middle of March to even out my S/R. And, since my last postcard came the 2nd of March, I’ve only been sending, not recieving (and most of them are still travelling).
AND TODAY.
I was bored, browsing through the forum, thinking about how odd was that I recieved so many postcards so fast in February but now mine’s taking so long to travel, and maybe mail was slowing down and damn, I can’t receive any more postcards until mine’s arrive when I looked at my stats SENT and…
WHAT. ON. EARTH.
All the postcards I’ve been receiving from the past few months were sent the exact same day. The day I set my account back from Travel Mode.
I don’t even know what I’m asking here.
Was this a glitch? Is this normal?
It is not supossed to be like this, right? As I said at the begining, I thought that every time someone gets your address, it goes back at the end of the queue.
Maybe when going back to travel mode your address appears more times one following the other?
Has this happened to someone else, too?
If you’ve read until here, know that I really apreciate it. I am currently saving all my addresses because I’m travelling again the first-second week of April and I want to send in Travel Mode but that means I won’t be receiving any mail any time soon, unless one of the postcards that are still travelling reach their destination.
I’m also a bit worried this will happen again once I come back from my trip. It is not a major problem, I’m happy I am receiving postcards, which is the important point.
But it took me almost two months to set back my Sent to what my Received looked like in less than two weeks, so I’d like some feedback, if someone has it.
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Something similar happened to me after I moved back from France to Italy last December and switched back to active on 24 December. My address was given to so many postcrossers that I only started receiving “new” postcards in March. Throughout January and February, I only received postcards sent in late 2021…
I have got used to this mechanism, but I was very surprised the first time I noticed it!
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https://community.postcrossing.com/t/receiving-more-cards-than-you-send/26658/11
I think you may find your answer here, or at least other people’s opinion.
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