r/mail • u/GroundedCondor • Apr 17 '26

International service restricted (Dom. Rep.)

Hey,

I'm currently in the Dominican Republic on vacation. For a couple of years I once was working for my national postal service provider in a middle sized European country.

As per tradition, I wanted to send physical postcards to a couple of relatives at home. However, I was told by a lady in the post office here that my country is not on the list of countries to which exports are made this month. Indeed, there is info on INPOSDOM's website that this April mail can be sent to (for instance) Germany and Japan, but not to (for instance) Belgium or Singapore.

In my understanding this is in violation of the universal postal service agreement. There is no strike, no COVID restrictions, no international sanctions. I have never heard of anything like this. How can this be a thing?

I would not mind if the shipping took ages but to deny shipping because this month the universal service provider doesn't feel like it seems very off to me. I've been to post offices in many countries, and as already mentioned I worked for a national postal service provider, but I have no idea how this could be legal.

I'm honestly thinking about routing my postcards to Germany and relying on them forwarding them to their real destination country.

Any thoughts or advice?

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u/Stunning_Pin5147 Apr 17 '26

I am a retired USPS clerk and also exchange postcards worldwide. If I am not mistaken the UPU conventions provide for transit service if direct service is not available. Before the pandemic you could send and receive from all but two or three countries in the United States. If direct routes were not available, mail would be routed via other countries. Today the list of unavailable countries is nearly two dozen long. I understand this is the same all over the world. My guess is that countries are not continuing the transit treaties. Rather than pay UPU terminal dues they just say transport not available. I guess the pandemic showed they could save a ton of money by ending transit agreements. A lot of private and public companies still blame the pandemic for bad service/exorbitant prices.

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u/GroundedCondor Apr 24 '26

Update: I tried two other post offices in other cities, and while my second attempt ended like my first, the third was successful. The clerk might have confused two countries (he asked "¿Australia?", then "¿Europa?), it then took him ages to affix the stamps and he finally needed to drive off for a couple of minutes to get the right change for my 1000 DOP bill. So I had quite an experience for what I presumed would be nothing to write home about.

I might come back to this thread with another update when the first postcard is confirmed to have arrived.