2021 Holiday Exchange -Secret Santa -Enter By 27 Nov

To be honest, I think it should be wound up.

The Postal services of the world are heading towards parcels and making letter and standard postage more expensive and harder to use. They are quoting problems like email and Covid 19 for all their issues.

Also the high number of unreceived ones and the fact that Samaritans like Carrigna and Wrekkd are bailing people out is wonderful, but why should they have to for something not their fault.

Plus as you saw too, some of the presents received were very "sub rosa". The $5 rule is good, most coin collectors are not Guapira (A Brazilian Favela we studied in Geography back in the 1990s) poor. Who the heck can't afford $5 and $5 more for postage (Well my guy couldn't - top marks for efficiency, it arrived well before Christmas at least).

Sadly it is NOT Richard's fault, the amount of work and organisation taken to do this is very high and he deserves nothing but our greatest respect, thanks and praise.

Blame the demise on greedy and rotten post offices, a few horrible and selfish people and bad luck I say. Plus its Christmas, many places in the USA, Canada and parts of Europe are under mountains of snow which makes travel hard.

If it was to continue I would.

1. Limit it to USA, Canada and Western Europe (No places with dodgy mail service). I would have to bow out.

2. Start registration in September, and allow sending from November 1 instead of December 1.

3. But for packages that arrive in November, make the receivees wait until at least Dec 20th to open (An exception will be made for Jewish people celebrating Hannukah and if it falls early in December, like it did last year - allow them to open theirs then) - But these people must declare they are Jewish and celebrate Hannukah to be fair.

4. Immediate suspension of account for people who don't send a package, unless there is a good reason like death of themselves or a close family member (Not 3rd cousin Aunt Orpha), major sickness like cancer, death covid or dengue fever, hospitalisation for major illness or severe stress, like losing a job or being declared a bankrupt.

This may work more.

I mean... I think a video drop showing you putting the envelope with the persons delivery info showing would be enough. Richard would not have extra work but if something didn't arrive at all at least you know it was sent.

@princetane. I didn't bail anyone out here. My first gift never arrived so I put together a second gift with what I had available but still had my giftee in mind. Shipping my second gift with tracking was an extra 17$ or so just to the USA.

Me personally will ship with tracking from now on if Richard decided to continue this. I think each participant having proof that they did send something should be enough.

Anyways my packaging wasn't amazing, if it's posted you will see lol but I hope I passed some February Christmas joy to my giftee.

Wrekkdd - believe me I was not knocking you or Carrigna for sending out extra gifts to people, its a wonderful gesture.

What I meant is that you should not have to. Had this system worked properly with everyone playing their part including greedy and incompetent Postal systems which love to use Covid 19 and email as catach all excuses for unreliable and slow service, such gestures would not be necessary.

Sorry but I am not able to post photos . I received a bunch of Canadian coins and a Jefferson nickel with a real nice lamination on reverse .
Thumbs up to Wrekkdd .

I would like to return to a gift minimum value of $10, with inflation the way it is, that should be a $$ easily accomplished.

I agree with the minimum increase for gifts, shipping out if country during this time seems much harder. It cost me more the first time to send a gift then it should have because I did customers forms rather then just dropping it in the mail box. Tracking to the states was about 20$ so sending less then it costs to send it seems dumb. I believe this is partially why the host of this event offered for people to be in a local list rather then a worldwide list. Rggoodie is doing and offering all of the answers to these problems before they start. I think the way it was done this year was perfect TBH.

I hope the last if the giftees received there gifts and if not it's up to them to forgive the person I would think. I didn't have to send my second gift but I wanted to. If my first gift arrives by Easter then awesome:)

This was my first year but I think any sort of proof of mailing should be easy. I mentioned video drop for non tracked packaging only, if you simply take a video of you mailing the package. Then you have proved you sent your gift, or at least sent something.

Awesome job to the host. I think this doesn't need to be discussed any further personally but that's not up to me at all. I think we should leave it to the one running the show and just hope the last gifts arrive. If he decides to continue this next year I think he's going to do an amazing job just like this year. Sorry for the huge resonse.

Please explain to others what a video drop is
Thank you