I’m fairly new to Postcrossing having joined 8 months ago. I register cards the day I receive them & request addresses & send cards as soon as PostCrossing lets me.
At present I’m at 63 Sent & 71 Received but am about to hit my 6th expired card, so almost a 10% expiry rate on cards I send. Just wondered if this is the norm for UK Postcrossers? (My expired ones are to Russia(2), Malaysia, Belarus, Indonesia & France)
I know we’ve had our postal strikes & there’s problems in some countries but our postal service seems to be a bit hit & miss. Sometimes I’ll go weeks with nothing received & then I get loads… I recently received 15 cards within 6 days!
Welcome Ken
Sadly what you are seeing appears to be the new normal.
The IT attack issue of GB postal service didn’t help
Russia & Belarus 3 of your 6 may still arrive. They go via Finland or Turkey since the invasion as no longer a direct route.
Your card to France should have arrived in 2/3 weeks. Its worth checking if they are active and if so resending.
Your last 2 locations have been known to be slow too so patience may yet be rewarded.
It appears to be normal for our address to be given out in batches.
For involvement inbetween I and many use the forum. Groups such as the British Isles RR or Many Themes . You would be most welcome
Good Luck
Hi @Ken2510
In the last 12 months i sent 144 cards, and have 10 expired (Russia, Belarus, USA and France). A couple of people may have given up, looking at their login, but they were active at the time the card should have arrived. My sense is thst this is normal and we have to factor in 10% losses.
And yes, cards are sent to me and arrive in batches. I now keep my account inactive, and only go active for a few minutes when my sent number is one more than received. I forgot back in February and stayed active for a couple of hours. I think that my address was drawn 16 or 18 times in that period (that’s from my received cards, there could still be some on the way).
I’ve noticed a lot more of my cards have expired lately since Royal Mail’s cyber incident. I’ve had 6 recently expire with another due to expire tomorrow, which is a lot more than I’ve ever had before. However, three that expired were then registered within 2 weeks of expiry so I am remaining hopeful that the others will arrive eventually even if they expire first!
I agree with @tesc and @geo_ . I think things were bad at the end of last year because of Christmas, but especially the strikes. And everything got MUCH worse after January’s cyber incident. BUT, things have really started to improve this last week, especially with mail to Russia and Belarus, which had been at a standstill in February.
I hope everything improves for you too.
Re the postcard to France - this should have arrived. Check that they have logged on recently and that they are regularly registering postcards. If they are, you might want to consider sending them a second card. But you don’t have to. You’ve already done your bit by sending the first. It depends how important it is to you to not have too many expired postcards.
Regarding lots of postcards being sent to you, this thread helps explain it:
Thanks for the info everyone. It might sound a bit sad but I quite like receiving postcards that are spread out more evenly over time as I can put a couple on my living-room unit and when a new card or two arrives the following week then I can change my view
My expireds are: Russia (204 & 85 days), Malaysia (123 days), Belarus (69 days), and Indonesia & France are expiring tomorrow & Wed. Looking at their profiles, I think 3 of the 6 members have started Postcrossing and then lost interest. I’m a bit wary of gaining too many Expired cards as I read on another post that Postcrossing then blocks you from requesting any more addresses… which seems a little unfair if you’ve been participating properly. Not sure how the algorithm would determine this.
I don’t like doing it as it feels a bit like trying to ‘game’ Postcrossing’s system but I’m taking Roving’s tactic on-board and have made my account inactive until my ‘Sents’ catch up a bit closer to my ‘Receiveds’.
Still, I’m looking forwards to receiving a 19% improvement in Royal Mail’s service from 1st April.
I have one from USA late December… really weird as the user logs in regularly but has not registered a single card since the start of January… They have very high overall send/received numbers (>1000 cards) so find it very hard to believe they’ve not received anything in over 2 months?
I find those sorts of accounts puzzling too. I do occasionally send second cards to expired addresses if the person regularly registers postcards, but I would be wary of wasting my money on an account like that.
Just a thought, maybe they’ve moved. Have you checked that the address you sent to is the same as their current one?
it should update automatically when you go back and look at the users address under travelling postcards.
This happened to me last year, with my first postcard to ‘The Gambia’ the card expired and the user moved to ‘Germany’ and the address automatically updated.
I sent a second postcard to the German address.
*although about a month later, I received a thank you message when they returned and checked their Gambia PO Box
If they are inactive, and have been for a while so that travelling cards that are not lost have reached them, but use the forum, or are still sending cards, this would show up as logging in but not registering.
I’m a bit wary of gaining too many Expired cards as I read on another post that Postcrossing then blocks you from requesting any more addresses… which seems a little unfair if you’ve been participating properly. Not sure how the algorithm would determine this.
service from 1st April. 
