My experiences over the past few years say that getting mail from overseas has gotten worse lately. For me this is mainly QSL cards.
The overwhelming majority of hams are pretty good over returning cards. Of course there have been a couple that put the postage money in the 'New Radio Fund' and then (maybe) throw a card in the bureau but these are pretty rare. These are the guys that handle their own QSLing. I am one of these and my cards go out religiously within 24 hours even if they didn't include the usual $2 return postage.
Enter the world of the QSL manager. The ham sends his manager his log via the web and the manager handles the QSL cards etc. This is commonly done by hams that have either overly expensive postage rates or outright lousy postal service.
If I work, say a Iranian with and Spanish QSL manager I send the Spaniard my card and he returns the Iranian card to me. Many Cubans use Spanish QSL managers as Cuban mail service is reported to be sketchy. IIRC Iranians use managers because postage is incredibly expensive, $20 to mail a letter I believe.
If someone overseas is using a Stateside manager it's a snap. I mail the manager a card, an SASE and I always throw in a buck which is sometimes requested but I do it even if it's not and inside a couple of weeks I have a card.
Enter overseas QSL managers that are only as good as their post offices are coupled with American post offices that have seemed to have put letters into a lower priority lately. I've heard that the PO priority now is packages because there's more money in that. Priorities are changing now and a lot of people pay bills on line.
The Piccolo rule of thumb for estimating when a letter from, say Europe will arrive is to Google it. If the Google Gods say 7-10 days you take the higher of the two, in this case the 10 and multiply it by 3=30 and it's going to take about 30 days.
I recently got a QSL card from TJ9MD, a DXpedition to Cameroon. They are an Italian group that went to Cameroon and sent their cards from Italy. They posted the day they mailed the cards and my card arrived 27 days later. 27/3=9 so that's about right according to my formula.
New Guinea blew my mind. The card I sent there was returned in a round trip of about two weeks. Go figure. When you imagine the ham has to have his mail delivered up a trail delivered by a mailman leading a goat, all the while trying to dodge headhunters. (Actually he probably lives next to the Port Moresby post office but let's not let the facts get in the way of a pretty good story)
As far as QSL manager dishonesty goes, it's pretty much a given that managers are honest. The ham community is small and gabby and it wouldn't take long for word to get out and they'd be dropped like a stone because it reflects on the operator that hired them.
Most QSL managers will take your information via PayPal and charge $3-5 and you don't have to send your card. When you add the cost of sending your card overseas and so on it's pretty much a wash and a lot easier.
Rarely does anything go wrong but it happens occasionally. Right now I'm waiting for a card from an Italian manager that he resent and it seems to have been lost again. The card is from an Iraqi QSO and Iraq is a hard entity to bag and I really want it.
Needless to say, if I go to the post office to find out what's going on he will blame it on the Italian postal service. If the Italian goes down to his post office they will blame it on the American postal service.
I've spoken with this with three other hams. Including me that makes four. We all agree that the cards have somehow been sent to the wrong place. One says it's in Lhasa, Mongolia, another says it's in Tonga, yet another says it's in Vanatu. I say it's in a forgotten sack in the corner of either an Italian or an American post office. (Either that or it's in a creek somewhere alongside a bunch of rotting ballots voting for Trump left over from 2020.)
Anyway, it's been a long time since the Italian has resent my card so it's going to be interesting as to what happens. Something is amiss here.
I've also had to ask a QSL manager to resend a card from Croatia that is from working a station in Samoa.
A lot of overseas mail doesn't seem to be getting through for some reason and it's rather annoying.
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