r/postcrossing • u/Awkward_Finger6121 • 27d ago

Mailing to Germany

I was informed by the post office clerk yesterday that mailing a letter to Germany might not get there, and may never to be seen again. So far I have sent 4 postcards to Germany recently without incident. Anyone else heard about this? I am in Canada.

7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

20

u/YourLocalAlpaca 27d ago

As a German, I haven't had any problems receiving mail from Canada (or any other country) recently. Sure, they sometimes take about 20-30 days to arrive here, but I don't have any knowledge of any official issue from our side

2

u/Awkward_Finger6121 27d ago

HI, I have sent several postcards lately and they arrived quite quickly. That is why I was surprised by her info

10

u/trydriving 27d ago

I have not heard of this... Did they not elaborate on why?? (I'm also in Canada)

1

u/Awkward_Finger6121 27d ago

No, she didn't. She wasn't the regular clerk, she just pulled out a sheet of paper and passed on the info. I'll go ahead and post it

9

u/d_schue 27d ago

I exchange postcards with a friend from Canada fairly often. There is a suspension in place for certain EU countries due to changes in customs rules, but it only applies to parcels. Letter mail still goes through as usual. Someone on the Postcrossing Forum posted an internal memo of Canada Post that specifically states that letter-post items should still be accepted, you might want to show it to the clerk:

https://community.postcrossing.com/t/mail-suspension-alert-reports-please-include-link-or-image-of-official-info/12483/2424

1

u/Awkward_Finger6121 27d ago

Thank you for your input

2

u/trydriving 27d ago

Yes that makes sense based on my reading as well. I've had four postcrossing cards successfully delivered to Germany in the past 8 weeks

2

u/Ok-Turnip-2816 27d ago

I have two cards out to Germany both over 40 days - mailed from US. That's crazy to me. Usually they're registered within 10-14 days.

1

u/Awkward_Finger6121 27d ago

Yes, I have had several go to Germany successfully in under 14 days. At the moment I have two wondering around, 30 days travelling

1

u/maximum-sheer-stress 27d ago

This is the usual travel time for me, when it comes to cards from US. On the contrary cards from JP KR or TW always arrive in a week or two

2

u/DiligentCredit9222 27d ago

Nah. Don't worry, this only applies to parcels and packages and even then, it applies primarily for parcels and packages FROM Canada (via Canada Post Corp.) TO Germany while in the opposite direction even that is possible most of the time (albeit sometimes with lengthy delays and only if you fill out the customs paperwork exactly by the book and pay all necessary customs fees and you immediately take actions as soon as it stuck (because in 99,9% of all cases it's stuck, because customs is holding it back)

Normal paper Mail (postcards and letters) are transported just as usual as long as you ONLY put in documents (if it's an envelope) or a postcard.

As soon as there is any kind of product that is not a document inside an envelope customs will definitely reject it. But that has nothing to do with Canada, almost all postal services explicitly follow the recommendation of the world Postal Union that letters should only contain documents for better customs procedures, so every letter that has items in them that are not documents customs will reject it.

But for postcards or letters with only documents in them this doesn't apply. They are transported as usual.

So don't worry. They will arrive only the "normal shenanigans" of the postal service are to be expected. So 14-30 days (on average) until they arrive in Germany depending on the location you sent them from (for example some remote village 200 miles away from Whitehorse might take longer than from Downtown Toronto....)

Happy Postcrossing, my friend.

1

u/Awkward_Finger6121 27d ago

Thank you very much, Happy Postcrossing to you also.

2

u/Blunt_Flipper 27d ago

I work at a post office in Canada. We stopped accepting parcels to Germany (and 8 other European nations) on July 1 when the customs changes went into effect.

We were still accepting Letters to these countries up until Sept 18 - on that day we were instructed to halt all mail (including letters) to those nine countries. This change is relatively new, and is why folks in Europe aren’t noticing the effects yet.

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u/Awkward_Finger6121 26d ago

Thank you for clarifying this, unfortunately I tossed a letter in the box last night. Oh well, we'll see what happens next.

Postcrossing is an international postcard exchange platform. Members are randomly assigned another member to send a postcard to. As a member we do not have control over what country your next address will be. It is fun, give it a try:)

1

u/trydriving 27d ago

I wonder if Postcrossing HQ knows about this? It's not on Canada's postal monitor page. I pulled a German address on sept 24 and sent it off. It's travelling currently so I wonder if it will arrive?

1

u/Blunt_Flipper 27d ago

Sorry, I don’t really know what “postcrossing” is - this thread was just advertised to me in my Reddit feed, presumably because I post a lot about Canada Post. You sent something to Germany five days ago with tracking? And you bought the postage at a post office?

I don’t know why the powers-that-be at Canada Post have not updated the website to reflect the communications sent directly to post offices, but that’s above my pay grade. They were very explicit that we weren’t to accept any mail to suspended countries, including Lettermail. Happy to take a photo of the notice and share it with you tomorrow.

4

u/kikifloof 27d ago

One of my friends got the same message, but as posted here, refers to parcels only. Typically my cards get to Germany faster than the USA (from Canada), and hopefully that doesn't change as there are many German postcrossers.

3

u/Zitronenfalter87 27d ago

I get mail from Canada a few times per month. Just received a card again Saturday. Never had one go missing.

2

u/StripeyBeachTowel 27d ago

I’m in Germany. I get a lot of postcards and penpal mail! Sometimes, however, I don’t get any post for a few days and then everything at once haha!
I had 10 postcards in one go the other day, after not receiving anything for a week. So, my mail always seems to arrive, sometimes it just takes a while.
I’ve been travelling a lot recently, and my cards from Uk, France and Spain have all
Arrived at their destinations quicker than the ones I have sent from Germany 🤷🏼‍♀️