2021 Holiday Exchange -Secret Santa -Enter By 27 Nov

Nothing has arrived here in Northeast Missouri yet and I believe it is hung up somewhere in the USPS system. If you are my Secret Santa please don't feel that you have to resend me a gift, my gift was sending out the SS gift and reading and seeing the posts and pictures that all of you have posted. I look forward to next years Secret Santa!

Are these long wait times semi Normal? From Ontario(45 minutes from Niagara falls) to new York seems it would be much faster. I imagine this time of year many gifts get lost but 7 weeks seems extremely excessive for a short trip. I have just assumed the gift was lost or stolen. Is there a possibility it could still be on its way? I guess either way I already have a new gift put together so I'll be sending it out. If my first gift arrives later one or before my next gift then Ill just call it a bonus:p I'm under a lot of pressure to clear up some space anyways lol.

Carrigna - that sounds wonderful, thank you.

how many people didn't get gifts and why?

I enjoyed my first year on the secrete Santa. Unfortunately with my first gift never showing up the gift is arriving much later then I had hoped. I would personally like To do this again next year. As for my second gift, I sent you and my giftee the tracking info. It's in the states and eta us the 18th, at this point it's more of a late Valentine's Day gift though.

rrgoodie,

I do understand your frustrations and being not pleased with this year's results. All considering, I do think we did well with the Post Office's shortcomings. I am especially proud that my Secret Santa package did arrive whereas many of my Christmas cards failed to arrive on time for Christmas. One was returned to me last week with a sticker saying it is undeliverable! I had to re-send it but it still do not reach my friend and his two girls. I think I shall say goodbye to two $10 I enclosed for his two girls.

Two months after Christmas! Still couldn't deliver.

It is a bit sad to see our Post Office going downhill and getting more expensive to mail due to the political interferences. BUT we can find a way to get around this sticky business by asking the members here to use the tracking numbers when sending our Secret Santa presents via first class package service or priority mail service.

I noticed that with tracking numbers, the Post Office does very well with delivering them.

International Secret Santas can use the custom declaration barcode as tracking but it depends on which countries. Not sure about the registered mail service as it varies from country to country's postal prices, I do know that in the UK, they are raising it due to the International Postal Union in "forcing" cheap postal services to increase their costs to "match" our postal prices because of the political pressure. That is something we should be mindful of our international members. Maybe they have better suggestions than I do.

Perhaps we can try to do something about the value of the Secret Santa present itself? I know we are supposed to do this out of the holiday spirits yet some of our recipients are missing this point in 2021. I am wondering if we should re-visit this? For me, I am just happy to receive a surprise gift.

I also think we should require everyone to disclose what gift(s) they got and took photo here.

rrgoodie has an authority to censor or suspend the members from this Secret Santa forum which I think is quite fair as we do not want anyone to dampen the Christmas or holiday spirit next year.

In other words, I want to see next year's Secret Santa exchange! I meant this year, that is.

The bottomline is that the pandemic still screw with the mail delivery and I sincerely think we did very well considering the situation we are in now.

I would be happy to contribute to the remaining giftees if rrgoodie is willing to do this one more before we officially wrap this up?

Hope everyone is looking forward to Valentine's Day! BUT let's give our big thanks to rrgoodie for his hard work as an awesome Secret Santa! We want to continue this wonderful tradition! (Hands Clapping)

Keep up doing the great job!

with T-Bop. Richard, you do a fantastic job of holding and putting together this yearly Secret Santa. I look forward to it each year and it's a lot of fun. The Tracking number is essential these days I believe and I always use them for the Secret Santa.