Getting Mail

[rileydf]

Greetings, I'm guessing this subject has been addressed, but since I'm new to the forum and have been wondering, how does one manage to receive snail mail when traveling fulltime?

[honda03842]

Dave, We're essentialy full timers and Escapees (see Escapees.com ). Escapees has a mail service. First when you are an Escapee you have a legal address in Texas, useful for other things besides mail. Second, you can have any mail forwarded to the Escapee mail center, an actual post office with a zip code. It's a very professional place, sorting machine and the like.

A secondary benefit, among many, of Escapees for fulltimers is the Days End Directory. The Directory contains all kinds of free or low cost places to camp.

When you want your mail, you call them or send an email telling them where you want it sent. We usually use small post offices and have it sent general delivery, sometimes it's just a town we plan to be passing thru.

We've used it for 9 years and never had a booble of any sort.

[accrete]

Everything Norm and Ginny said above

And since you are in Oregon (like us), you might check into your local UPS Store. We've used the one near us on the Oregon Coast for two years and it works great. You will have an easy address to remember and mail/receive anything you wish. Our full time service costs us $110 a year so IMO it's a good deal. OR DMV also will take it as an address for your ODL... of course it says "Continuous Traveler" on our license... but even the banks and insurance companies had no issue with it. If they ask where we live, we tell them to stop by and we'll treat them to a round of golf

[Byron Kinnaman]

There's several ways to get snail mail while on the road. Some with small problems others with a bit of expense.
For the last 4 years for our 3 month winter trip I've my mail temporarily forwarded to my daughter. Then when we're in one place long enough she ships the mail to us.
Problems- -- USPS treats temporary forwarding the same as permanent forwarding. Any thing they think is advertising goes into the trash, magazine subscriptions are notified of a change of address, and will not forward new credit cards.
It's easy to do on line.

This next year we're thinking about using their for a fee forwarding service. As I understand it they box all your mail up and send it to a forwarding address once a week. But, you can't get it saved up and sent to where you are, just to a single address. Cost I believe is $5.17 to start the service and $5.17 for each weekly shipment.
We would still need to forward it to the daughter and still call her to send to general delivery where ever we are.

I know some people that have registered their domicile in South Dakota. They have all their mail sent there and then have it sent to where ever they are. I don't know the cost and as I understand it if you have an anchored home someplace else you can't live it more than 6 months per year.

If you're only going to be away for between 3 and 30 days USPS will just hold your mail for you. You sent the dates for holding and resuming delivery on line. We often take 1 to 3 week trips in the summer and use this method.

[Byron Kinnaman]

Originally Posted by accrete

Everything Norm and Ginny said above

And since you are in Oregon (like us), you might check into your local UPS Store. We've used the one near us on the Oregon Coast for two years and it works great. You will have an easy address to remember and mail/receive anything you wish. Our full time service costs us $110 a year so IMO it's a good deal. OR DMV also will take it as an address for your ODL... of course it says "Continuous Traveler" on our license... but even the banks and insurance companies had no issue with it. If they ask where we live, we tell them to stop by and we'll treat them to a round of golf

I've heard that when using one these mail stores and you move USPS will not forward your mail. How's that handled?

[accrete]

Originally Posted by Byron Kinnaman

I've heard that when using one these mail stores and you move USPS will not forward your mail. How's that handled?

We put a change of address into our local USPS office and they forwarded mail as it trickled in for the usual 12 months after our _move_ without issue. We even get junk mail. Yippie

[Byron Kinnaman]

Originally Posted by accrete

We put a change of address into our local USPS office and they forwarded mail as it trickled in for the usual 12 months after our _move_ without issue. We even get junk mail. Yippie

Was the forwarding to the UPS store?

That wasn't the problem I heard about. A friend had a boat moored at Hayden Island and use the UPS store or something like it for his mail. He was told that if he went to a USPS address he couldn't get his mail forwarded from the store address. He was thinking about a postal box at a USPS post office.

[Bob Miller]

Even waaaay back in the mid 70's, when we full timed for a year, we used almost the same system as we use now.

1. All mail is picked up by my house manager. (in the 70's, my Father in Law)

2. I call once a week and we sort the mail on the phone. If it's a bill, I have it opened, get the amount and make a note for payment at my end. If it needs to be forwarded to me, either it goes into a Priority Mail envelope and that gets sent General Delivery to a Post Office I will be at in the next few days, or I have him scan and email anything I have to have, usually for a signature.

All that said, there is seldom any mail forwarded as almost all of my bills go to my BofA bill-pay system and I can access most of those statements on-line.

But.... Ya gotta trust your mail person.

[honda03842]

Following up on some comments. We get very little mail these days. All our bills except taxes come via our bank, Bank of America, big bank but everywhere. We have cancelled all subscriptions except the Escapee Magazine though they do forward magazines. We occasionally stop at a big library on a rainy day and read all the mags we want. As well our library makes mags available on line. We get no 3rd class mail and that's OK.

We're gone almost 8 months a year. Our first two years we used a relative to forward our mail. As we recognized we'd probably be on the road for the rest of our lives we decided on a professional solution.

Generally Escapees uses priority mail. We do not have package forwarding from Escapees though it is available. Escapee Mail typically arrives in 3 working days. The mail service cost $80 on top of your Escapee membership fee. We have mail forwarded about once a month,

[rileydf]

Thanks for all the input.

Dave

[Byron Kinnaman]

We get very little mail. A reoccurring bills are paid via an automatic bill pay. If there happens to be a bill that would come in the a quick phone call and pay with credit card takes care of that.
Because of the rural area we used to live in and the occasional mail theft, we managed to stop all bills, account summaries, checks, etc. etc. from coming the mail. When at home we just get about 1 or 2 pieces of mail a day, mostly 3rd class. So we're not missing anything.
Even after moving our non locking mail box is on the street and subject to theft.

Therefore we don't see any mail for a month or two it's ok.

[honda03842]

Byron,

Interesting about stolen mail...to my knowledge I've never had a piece of mail stolen. Like you we after so many years of travel, we have little mail since bills are Internet.

[Byron Kinnaman]

Originally Posted by honda03842

Byron,

Interesting about stolen mail...to my knowledge I've never had a piece of mail stolen. Like you we after so many years of travel, we have little mail since bills are Internet.

When we lived on the farm we had mail stolen about 3 times in 15 years. Just enough the make us changes our ways. They only got junk mail. However the good was they kind of forced us to change what we were doing.
By the way, the only thing we heard from USPS when we reported the first theft, was there had several reports in our area.
Another time the thieves took mail from on mail box opened it then put it in another. When I called because I had mail that didn't belong to me all I got was "thanks" and hang up. I delivered that mail to person it belonged to.
Another case where we have to protect ourselves, which shouldn't be a surprise. And the USPS wonders why they're loosing business.

[accrete]

Byron, now i understand your Q...I will ask the store owner next time i'm in. Forwarding mail from the UPS store if one goes back to a USPS street address. Got it. I hadn't thought of it as Cari & I plan on being in an RV for well...the rest of our lives : ) and have never felt like owning land/property/home etc.

Yes on the automatic banking. Great technology. All our bills are paid that way. And we get ~3 to 4 items of "mail" a week that are non-bill related. . . but i am slowly getting that number to a hopeful zero!

Thom

[Randi in NJ]

I have a box at a private mailbox service. It is my legal address, and I just call them, and they will sent it to any address I ask them to. Doesn't cost much, depends on how long since I last had my mail sent and the volume in the box. I've been using them for several years now, and it has worked out great.

Randi

[Bob Miller]

If you put in a change of address from a mail drop address, to a new USPS address it should be forwarded per my local postmistress about a year ago.

But don't expect the USPS to forward mail to you from the mail drop to your current location for free without a change of address entered.

[Scamper Jim]

Has anyone had any difficulty in having items that were purchased on e-Bay and the like, and paid through Pay-Pal?

What is done for them to have a "Confirmed Address" or is that not a problem?

Thanks,
Jim

[honda03842]

We regularly use PayPal and have never had an issue.

I don't understand the problem portion of your post.

[Carol H]

Originally Posted by Scamper Jim

Has anyone had any difficulty in having items that were purchased on e-Bay and the like, and paid through Pay-Pal?

What is done for them to have a "Confirmed Address" or is that not a problem?

Thanks,
Jim

Jim I often pay for online items using Pay Pal as well as credit Cards and I have them sent to an address that is not the same as whats on the card or my Pay Pal account (often a different country as well) but from time to time the vendor may reject the order over that issue so I just call or email the vendor and explain why and they are good with it.

[Scamper Jim]

Norm,

I thought the message you sent was in a private email since I didn't see your question posted, so I responded there. I will get the hang of the delayed postings yet. Here is the response I sent to Norm to better illustrate what I was asking.


Hi Norm,

I should have given more information in the post. What I was refering to is that after buying something and I go the page with my shipping address, there is a little notation next to it that indicates whether my address is "confirmed" or somthing to that effect. It always indicates that it is since I have bought a lot using my home address.

I was wondering if eBay needs to have a stable address in order for that to be so indicated. If not indicated, what happens? If not confirmed, do they just note it as such, and warn the seller? If the seller sees that the address is not certified, can they refuse to ship?

Was wondering if eBay checks your address against other data sources to check for consistency, and if that would be a problem if your address changes periodically while traveling.

I hope that states my question better.

Since you have not experienced any difficulties when ordering and receiving stuff while on the road, there probably is nothing to be concerned about.

Thanks,
Jim


Since then, Carol has responded with her experience, so it looks like there could be an issue with the seller. Best to connect with seller if questions about the address arises.

Jim