Recently, I drew an address to a country I’ve never sent to before. As always, I check nearly every day to see if the recipient received it. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed their profile now says they live in a totally different country. Should I message them and ask if I should send another? It has been 30+ days now, and I I’m starting to doubt they’ll get the one I sent. I have no clue how international mail forwarding works.
What would you do?
The postcrossing system will automatically register your card when the receiver change to their new address, I have one of my card registered by the system because the receiver has new address, but I think the receiver has to change their new address themselves first on their account setting. I’m not sure about the details too
I think it’s good to give it a time until it expires first, then it’s appropriate to send them a message about it
Or maybe writing a report to postcrossing team can be a good idea so they can email the receiver to change their address
That happens only if the receiver agree to that when they change the address.
The best thing would be to inform the support and ask for help 
Contact us
I have messaged support and let them know. Thanks for the advice!
They may have set their account to travel mode after you sent your card, so they may be sending cards from a different country. So it may be in their mailbox but since they are traveling, they can’t check their mail.
@smartymarty, When in travel mode, does it change your location/origin on your profile? Because theirs has changed. (I have never used travel mode, so I’m unfamiliar!)
When you’re in travel mode, your address isn’t given out to receive postcards (because obviously you’re travelling, so you’re not at home to receive any cards!) so your address doesn’t change.
When you send a card in travel mode, it gets an ID from the country you’re visiting and shows on the maps as coming from the country you’re visiting. It also means Postcrossing can take account of the Postal Monitor for the country you’re visiting, make the distances a little more accurate, etc. Pretty neat!
No, travel mode doesn’t change the look of your profile - you would still be shown in your original country/town. Only your cards sent in travel mode would show you with a different flag, like this:
Hi Mackenzie. Last year in June, I drew an official address in Belarus, during the very short window when the USA was allowing mail to Belarus (I think it was a two week window). I waited and watched for months hoping the card would make it.
Finally when I considered sending a second card, I clicked on their postcard ID under my traveling cards tab to get their address again. The address had changed! It now showed an address in Poland!
I sent a second card to them at the updated address in Poland. The member received and registered it (215 days travel time).
I remember I asked in a forum post about why the card wasn’t registered automatically by PC when this person moved to a different country(!) and changed their address for their profile.
As mentioned in other comments here, I learned that members who move can choose if they want their incoming cards automatically registered. Apparently this member didn’t choose that option. After my experience, I feel like automatic registration should be mandatory when members move to a new country. I also don’t know why I wasn’t alerted by PC to the new address being available to me. If I hadn’t clicked on the postcard ID under my traveling cards tab, I never would have known.
I don’t agree, because it doesn’t mean you cannot register them any longer. Just imagine students going abroad for a semester, especially if the lived with their parents beforehand. They could send photos of the cards and IDs and the student may register them without delay. Moving countries doesn’t mean not being able to… as you may leave relatives at home who are able to assist 
Many students study within their own country.
If a student member is studying abroad, certainly that is a unique situation, possible even a minority of members. Why not have the remaining cards still going to the former address be registered automatically, rather than relying on a family member or relative who may not treat the registration of postcards with as much importance as the member does? Depending on someone else in another country to be reliable in forwarding that info via email or additional snail mail could cause delays and/or misplaced cards. Automatic registration following a move to a foreign country means other members will not be kept waiting for a long time to have their postcards registered.(like I did - 215 days).
I appreciate your viewpoint though, and obviously Postcrossing has the same outlook. Thank you.
Surely the person who best knows the likelihood of this happening is the postcrosser who is moving?
I don’t know, no one does, not even the person who moves, and leaves their mail up to others. That sounds like a rhetorical question. I’m not going to argue about this with every member who comments here sharing a different viewpoint. I’m certainly not interested in spending time sharing examples of those who relied on family and relatives, only to find out they’re not reliable.
Both of our opinions are valid, so let’s agree to disagree.
There are other discussions that include this topic, and opinions in these threads are as varied as ours.
This might be unique to Americans, but in Europe it’s quite common to move to another country for studies or work, e.g. the yearly 300.000 participants in EU’s study abroad programme ERASMUS. And international mail forwarding works just as simple and well as national.
I agree that it should not be mandatory. In most cases when I’ve changed countries I’ve quit using postcrossing far enough in advance to not worry about any outstanding cards. But in a couple of cases, my previous address belonged to a family member and I just had them let me know when cards arrived, which I then registered.
Thank you! I appreciate you clarifying that. That’s nice to know. It would be interesting to learn how many of the yearly 300,00 participants in the EU’s study abroad programme are Postcrossing members.
I would say it is quite common to move within the USA and even then, the US Postal Service can be inconsistent in forwarding mail. Last year I moved to a new city and state, and paid the USPS for additional forwarding services but received no additional mail. The USPS offers a free short term service but I paid for a longer and more comprehensive service. Thankfully I had switched my profile to inactive more than two months in advance of moving so incoming cards wouldn’t get lost at least.
Plenty of Americans do move abroad as well, but from what I understand, the USPS is not necessarily dependable in that aspect either. It is inconsistant from city to city, and region to region, and has suffered from regulation and budget cuts that reduced services as well.
It’s nice to know international mail forwarding works so well in Europe.
I guess it’s impossible to get an absolute number here, but on Wikipedia I found that “Erasmus students represented 5 percent of European graduates as of 2012” and “Spain is the country that has allowed most people to participate in Erasmus with more than 40,000 per year, slightly ahead of France, Germany and Italy”. Taking into account that both, postcrossing and ERASMUS, attract people who are interested in getting in touch with foreign cultures and that both have large numbers of participants from Germany, I would assume that a good number of European students, who participate in postcrossing are ERASMUS students as well.