Post Card Mailing time to the US
 

Are any countries notorious for having slow mail delivery to the US? Like most folks, I enjoy sending postcards home when I'm abroad on my travels. BUt my past two trips to Prague and Peru have yielded a 0% success rate for a postcard arriving at its American Destination.

Is it just the Luck O' the chexfan, or do others share my woes?

Post cards
 

Well, one rule is to never mail cards from a hotel. Always mail from an official mailbox.

I found Peru to be very reliable, in part due to the privatized post office.

European post cards tend to take about a week.

Bhutan was very unreliable. None of the cards I mailed from the airport mailbox arrived, even though the ones I mailed from the interior (2 hours by road from the airport) did arrive.

The postcards I usually mail from Europe tend to take 10 days to 2 weeks to be delivered. My problem is that I'm usually home by the time they arrive. That bugs me more than them not arriving.

think about it- you're in another country and hand a desk clerk the equivalent of (let's say) one US dollar per card, five cards is five bucks

he takes your money and says he will stamp and mail them

HA!

the money goes in his pocket, the cards go in the trash

as stated above, i always mail from a post office- or put stamped cards directly into the mail box, i never give someone cash in hopes the cards will get mailed

there's another scam- in a certain Asian country, a postcard to the US, airmail, is the equivalent of 33 us cents. i've been asked, in luxury hotels, for 3 times that!- know your costs!!

I wouldn't count on that. I once put a postcard into an official mailbox outside a post office in FTE (Argentina). Something was amiss and I checked the mailbox to find a poor design and a loose lock, and stacks of postcards inside (and international rates in Argentina are very very high).

That said, I mailed from the J.W. Marriott in BKK a few years ago (staff actually took new stamps and put on on the card) and they actually reached the receipients. Did the same thing (but not see the cards beign stamped) at the Conrad a year later and of course nothing ever reached the destinations.

The post cards from Prague were stamped and left w/ the Concierge. A postcard from a post office in Lima and a mailbox in Cuzco still haven't made it.

Every single postcard I've sent across my travels had appeared until now. Oh well.

2+ weeks from South Africa.

And, NO, don't hand your postcards to the front desk staff with some cash. Either charge the postage to your room, or, my preference, by the stamps and then mail postcards later (from airport (my preference), front desk, or corner box).

At NRT, they had a special airport cancellation, which was received as being very cool by my two nephews.

May I humbly suggest taking longer trips and mailing the postcards earlier? Month long vacations should take care of the problem. ;)

All of my postcards have eventually made it to the destination. I do recall that a bunch of postcards I mailed from the Prague Castle took a very long time to get to the States--on the order of two months, but this was three or four years ago. A similar mailing in March this year took only a week or so.

What I find most interesting are the price differentials in mailing postcards. Germany is incredibly expensive not just to the States, but internally. It stands out sharply compared to the Netherlands or Czech Republic, in my mind. The US has the least expensive internal rates and are not that bad to Europe ($0.74). US to Canada rates though (I was told $0.55 recently) seem a bit steep considering the physcial distance involved.

Istanbul: one time it took 3 weeks; another, only a week.

Switzerland More Than Germany
 

Switzerland, at CHF 1,80 (about US $1.44) beats Germany's E 1, (about US $1.28). The U.S. certainly is a good value.

Another annoying feature is that many countries are now selling tourist-oriented "anywhere" stamps for postcards, which do not exhibit a value. That takes some of the fun out of it. South Africa, UK, and Switzerland are examples of this phenomenon.

And, one year in Italy, I received 3 different quotes for the postcard rate to North America from 3 post offices...but all the cards arrived anyway!

Argentina must be up there. ARS 5.25 (USD 1.75).

Cyprus and Thailand are quite cheap IIRC.

In dodgy countries, it's best to go to directly to the post office and ask for the stamps to be cancelled then and there.

I'd like to know what hotels you guys are staying at that don't follow through on the simple task of mailing postcards - so I can avoid them. I've never had a problem - and I don't stay at the Four Seasons or Grosvenor! I can't believe any 3 star or better hotel would pay so poorly that someone would need to pocket stamp money to supplement their income.

I'd also like to borrow your psychic powers - since you're sure it was the hotel and not the country's postal system that caused the failure - please let me know what this Wednesday's Lotto numbers in CA will be. :-)

My Peru Postcard arrived on saturday about 6 weeks after I mailed it! :eek:

Based on my recent trips, here's how long my postcards took to make it back home (BOS):

From...
Tokyo, Japan - 6 business days
Tallinn, Estonia - 7 business days
Riga, Latvia - 5 business days
Vilnius, Lithuania - 9 business days
Nida, Lithuania - 12 business days

My only international postcard that has never made it home was mailed at Heathrow :-/

1-3 weeks from various middle eastern countries

I know this seems obvious, but a PAR AVION sticker shaves about three weeks off the time.

Postcards and letters from the UK to the US seem to take 5 days to 2 weeks.

I mailed post cards from Budapest that arrived 3.5 months after they were sent. I placed them in a mail box and had the correct postage. Everyone was like "you went to Budapest AGAIN?".

Russia -> US was about 3 weeks.

St. Kitts & Nevis: 15 calendar days from the postmark date, however it took three days from the time I dropped postcards at the front desk to the postmark date. Don't know what happened there.

Earlier this year I took the train up to Jungfraujoch in Switzerland.(the highest train station in Europe)

I mailed several post cards to my friends. The post cards were deposited into the mailbox next to the souvenir shop. Some of my friends on the east coast received them in only 3 business days!!! (mailed on Monday and
delivered on Thursday)

The slowest post card I've received was from my friend who mailed it from Buenos Aires. It took almost 3 weeks to reach me...

You should be grateful your baggage made it. :p

Tripoli, Libya to Seattle => 2 weeks! :eek: :D ^

I must be lucky - mail delivery (not just postcards) from Paris to the US can be very fast. I've dropped things in the mail at my local Paris branch on a Thursday morning and had them show up on Saturday morning in NY. Same thing happened once to Boston. Curiously, going the other way is much slower - letters US-Paris take about week pretty reliably.

Prague to Buenos Aires - all 4 still in transit these past 3 years
Buenos Aires to the US and Europe - 3 to 4 weeks

Yes, mail from Hungary is notoriously slow. I've mailed postcards to the U.S. from various official mail boxes in that country, always with exactly the right postage. They never take less than a month.

Ed

here is a little hint:

you want your postcard to arrive within days?

put it in an envelope, pay for first class mail and I'll guarantee that it will arrive within 5-7 days regardless of where it was posted.

Post cards are treated almost as bad as third class mail, but a first class envelope will get there quickly.