I have shifted to a new address in December 2019 and since then I have received only one card. The pandemic last year didn’t help much. I could still send cards in January, February 2021 and while they have reached their destination, I have not received a single card sent to me!
As the situation now stands, I am getting automated emails from Postcrossing telling me about the high number of cards that were not registered by me. Hence, I cannot even send any more cards until I get the issue resolved.
I tried asking at the local post office but they deliver the cards they receive, so no issues there. I have sent a letter to the Postmaster General of my state but I doubt I will get any reply. I just want to send some cards to people, they reach fine and frankly, this is all I want.
You should definitely get in contact with the admins, as you even asked at your local post office. You did everything you could, maybe the admins have more answers for you.
https://www.postcrossing.com/contact
Some years back when I faced an issue with receiving mail, I sent a letter by registered post to the Senior Superintendent of Post Offices of my area. The letter was acknowledged and somebody from my local post office visited my address to enquire about the complaint. They said that any mail addressed to me was being delivered. In any case, after that complaint I never faced any issue.
I tried contacting them 2 times over the past week but till now I have not received any reply.
Yes, they sometimes take quite a while to come back to you. They get many requests and are only three people dealing with them. They will answer you, just have some patience.
I faced same issue in 2019. Many postcards were lost and surprisingly lots of envelopes (Philatelic exchanges) were also never delivered to me during that period. I formally lodged a complaint at Local PO. But nothing changed. I stopped exchanging envelopes and due to high number of unregistered postcards I was unable to send postcards on Postcrossing also. For couple of months I waited. In the meantime I updated my profile on the Postcrossing with message - If your sent postcard is expired please message me.
I registered few postcards which were lost. At least I could see the images uploaded by sender. It is quite sad that sometimes mail just vanishes. Don’t know where!
After that I was able to send postcards again. But now I put my account in inactive mode. For 2-3 months I sent many postcards and reached a limit when there was significant difference between sent and received. I received another alert by Postcrossing that I cannot send more cards. So I set my account into active mode. But I thought of changing the address (from my hospital address to home address - due to COVID)
While changing the address, there was a pop-up asking me if I want to proceed with auto registration of traveling postcards or I will do it manually later. I chose Auto- registration. So there were 65 postcards traveling to me and all got registered. Eventually in next 3 months I received 48 cards from these 65. But in this rollercoaster ride I was able to send Postcards and that’s what matters most to me. I was pretty upset when I was unable to send postcards and I can understand your situation. But you need to wait and situation will get better.
Ah! Thank you! I will wait and hope that the people who have sent me cards let me know.
Yes. I agree it is against the Guidelines. I confess that I have registered 3 or 4 cards and eventually received one of them later.
But if you see situation two where cards were registered by Postcrossing on behalf of me (due to address change) same thing happened (even though cards were lost they were registered).
I don’t want to receive same amount of cards that I send. I am satisfied with less number of cards also. I get more satisfaction when my cards make someone happy. But I understand that Postcrossing can not change the code/algorithm behind to accomodate very few people like me and purpose is to receive and send cards. Not just send random cards.
Yes, that is true - I don’t really like that either but of course it is a contingency measure (e.g. when I move I put myself inactive several weeks before, but of course there might be stray stuff or some people might change address with relatively short notice).
For me, what I want is that the postcard arrives, so if it is registered without having arrived, it is meaningless.
Also the rule of not registering what you haven’t received is to try and minimise cheaters, like someone could get addresses, not send a card and ask people to register saying it is lost. So they don’t send but will receive. Probably rare to go all that trouble but I think that’s at least part of the idea behind it. It never ceases to amaze me how well-designed Postcrossing is!
I also like sending more than receiving so for my cards that are not registered I try to imagine that they arrived but the recipient never came back. When the recipients are active members and my card is clearly lost, it is sad. But I don’t feel I would be gaining anything by asking to register what hasn’t arrived (and by registering what hasn’t arrived to me).
Agreed
When my card gets expired I check if member is active. I will send a message (without ID) to know if they have received the card. If not I try to send a second Card with same written on it. Most of the times it reaches second time. Few times both cards reach the destination.
Yes. I am also amazed at how beautifully website is designed to achieve the objectives of this project.
Yeah. Lots of people do that (without ID). I stopped doing that because I personally find it not useful, it has never been useful for me. I also don’t like to send a second card because when I learnt about Postcrossing, the guidelines say you don’t have to so I got used to that idea, so I rarely do it. But I am starting to think it is not such a bad idea after all. I have two cards going to active members in the Netherlands for many months, I am 99% sure that if I send a second one to them, it will reach them. But most of the time my lost cards are to members who rarely log in, so I don’t bother.
Interestingly, I don’t remember almost anyone writing to me to ask if the card arrived (without ID). Only one time with ID asking me to register and I didn’t want to, and the card arrived a few weeks later. Oh and once without ID and that card also arrived even if it took forever. But I don’t remember other times. Maybe most of the cards reach me? And the few that don’t, the sender doesn’t write to me.
Update
So, I have finally got a reply from the Postcrossing team regarding my issue. They have registered the postcards sent to me (a total of 19 cards 
). They replied that hopefully the issue would be sorted by now in the postal department.
All of these cards were sent in early February of this year and what I think is normally they would have arrived by April - May 2021, but during that time in India, there was the devastating second wave of Covid and all services were suspended barring the essentials. So, almost all international flights were not operating except a few from the US, UK, etc. Somewhere, the cards perhaps never left their originating country or were not deemed as important by authorities in India. The cards were simply sent at a bad time.
It is sad that cards got lost.
Yes it was the second wave time.
Btw It is very nice of Postcrossing team that they registered all the cards sent during this extraordinary times. Hope the postal gods bless you with the more mail and postcards in near future.
I had same issue. During peak pendamic days. I did not receive any post and admin blocked my account. I checked with post office and was assured that no post is lost at their end.
So i wrote to admin that missing cards is not my mistake and not in my hand. They unfreezed my account immediately. Possibly admin just want assurance from us that we are not lazy to register cards and our address is proper in our account.