Are they floating around in the place where all the missing pens and socks are?
Carrie's recent delayed postcard (https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/solo-in-the-uk-my-york-and-edinburgh-trip-report#bottom) reminded me of when I sent a postcard from Istanbul to Arizona in 2007. The recipient is still waiting to receive it 😜
Have you ever had a postcard never arrive, or arrive very late?
Still waiting for a post card I sent to myself from a tiny hillside town in Italy in 2016. Its were I took some of dearest friends ashes. It was the town where her family originated. She always wanted to there but never did. Cancer invaded.
So as her best friend of 50 plus years, I took her.
BTW i love keeping postcards I’ve received over the decades. Small historical pieces of art as well preserving memories of family members no longer living.
Re sending postcards from the Uk, a few years ago I remember a thread either here or on TripAdvisor. Seems that the souvenir photo postage stamps you can buy at some attractions meant your postcards got sent to a whole other country for processing - thus taking weeks. There was advice only to use proper Royal Mail stamps either from the Post Office or sold in a little booklet from high street shops.
Does anyone remember this? Sorry if I’m a bit vague on the details.
Still waiting for my parents to receive a postcard I sent in 2010 from Lake Como.
I recently sent about ten postcards from the U.K. to the U.S. and all but one arrived in a reasonable time. The one that didn't took an extra two weeks for some reason. I've also had a bunch over the years that never made it to their destinations, including some from my trip to Hawaii last year. I've never worked for a postal service, but I would imagine those things are easy to lose.
Sent a postcard to our daughter when we were on vacation in Ireland. Card arrived ok but she thought it was junk mail, Our GDaughter looked and noticed an Irish stamp and wife's handwriting. Saved by a 5 year old! Our daughter posted a funny on social media about our thinking we were adults (both late 60's) and didn't have to report to her. We still laugh at family gatherings.
@Golden Girl we came across this in Italy. It seems that most of the shops (not the post office) sold third party stamps, which required special non-Italian postal service boxes, that were hard to identify. As I recall, their mail would go to either the Philippines or Indonesia first, then on to final destination. Not knowing this, some of our cards were put into a regular mail box, and showed up >1 year later. Some never came at all.
In answer to the question about UK postcards, yes, I wrote a post back in 2017 (but can't find it now) warning people about that, after our bad experience in Scotland sending quite a few cards, few of which arrived, and those months late. NEVER EVER buy those fake colorful stamps from a souvenir shop. Only genuine Royal Mail stamps from a real post office. The fake ones are sold by a ripoff company which for some reason is allowed to run a scam post office. When you put cards stamped with their product in a mail box, that company gets them instead of Royal Mail. They do route them around the world before they ever get anywhere (if they arrive at all). When I posted that in the "tourist scams" page, I got a few kind of snippy responses from people in the UK (as well as some saying thanks for the warning), saying essentially, what's the problem, they're just cards, people should know we have fake post offices here, and so on. Well, when you add up the steep price of cards and stamps these days, and the time wasted writing them if they don't get there, it is a pretty nasty little scam that can be quite expensive. And why would it occur to someone to question whether postage stamps are the real thing, if they are from a place where a stamp is a stamp, until they are a victim of this? Don't fall for it!
Decades ago Italy's postal system was notorious for not handling mail properly. It was suggested that if you actually wanted your mail to arrive, you should mail it at the Vatican post office. This was before the advent of private delivery services, which are indeed a menace to the traveling public.
Here’s your thread, Slate.
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tourist-scams/uk-post-card-scam
I remember it being covered on the BBC radio consumer programme You & Yours around the same time.
My Aunt received one of six that I sent to her last October. The others that I sent from Italy had a QR code stamp and I periodically check them for progress. They all say “on the way to the sorting facility”. I think that’s Italian for “they went to recycling”.
Happy to hear my missing postcards are not alone. 😊
Seems that the souvenir photo postage stamps you can buy at some
attractions meant your postcards got sent to a whole other country for
processing - thus taking weeks.
This might explain my issue as I purchased my stamps from the edinburgh tourist office.
