Getting Mail Forwarded

[outwest]

We are not full timers, but go on the road for anywhere from a month at a time to 3 months at a time.

I've found a few places where you can claim the forwarding company as your legal address, change your address with everyone that needs to send mail to you, and get the forwarding company to send your mail to wherever you are, but I would really like to maintain our residence as address of record and it's such a pain to file change of addresses with everyone (especially banks and merchant account providers).

As I said, when we're gone, we're sometimes gone for 3 months, which means that the post office 30-day hold is out of the question.

I looked at getting a box at a UPS Store and having the USPS temporarily forward mail to there, when out of town, but from what I read the Post Office wont forward mail to a UPS store box because it's technically a business address and they wont forward to business addresses.

I discovered that the USPS has a service where they will forward your mail to an address you specify, once a week, typically on wed, but we move locations every couple of weeks, so I presume that's not an option either (plus, some locations we stay at you cannot receive postal mail, only UPS shipments).

Does anyone have any suggestions/advice for how to handle this? The mail we receive at the house is a combination of personal mail and business mail.

In the past, we had my sister pick up our mail from the box every day and then forward it to wherever we were, (using UPS letter packs) but she has gotten a wild hair, left her husband, and moved away (after racking up over $100,000 in credit card debt without his knowledge). And, her husband travels extensively on business, so he can't pick up our mail for us either (and in fact is now in the same boat in regards to his mail). Hence the need to sort out something else.

There is a neighbor we trust to be responsible, but she's a widow and it's all she can do to maintain her house, yard, and her own personal affairs, so we hate to ask her to take on the burden.

So, does anyone have any ideas or know of a service that can handle this sort of thing - having USPS mail temporarily forwarded to them and having them use UPS to ship the mail to varied addresses on specific dates?

Edit to add - I've looked at a few services, such as usa2me, but the ones I've found all seem to forward your mail using USPS, whereas I need it to be forwarded using UPS. Again, any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[KanTC]

Outwest,

The only one that comes to mind is Good Sam's Mail Service. No first-hand experience, so I don't know specifics, but DH's parents (snowbirds from Indiana)
used the GS service when they spent the winter in the Fla Keys or on TX coast.

Edited to add: From the GS site... "Choose USPS or FedEx for your forwarding service"
http://blog.goodsamclub.com/2012/05/mailservice/

Terri, the Chevy co-pilot

[jsmith948]

The DW and I have been having a similar conversation. We can convert all of our billing and monthly statements to paperless. Our retirement incomes are electronically deposited. But, there still may be items that cannot be converted to paperless. We are very interested in this. Hopefully someone has an idea/answer.

[jsmith948]

Thanks Terri - we stayed at the Desert Gold RV Park near Quartzsite, AZ this January. There were a number of snowbirds there from the northern US and Canada. They were receiving their mail at the park office, but did not think to ask how they did that (forwarding service or change of address). The GS service is good info

[hankaye]

Howdy All;

jsmith948 posted;
"Thanks Terri - we stayed at the Desert Gold RV Park near Quartzsite, AZ
this January. There were a number of snowbirds there from the northern
US and Canada. They were receiving their mail at the park office, but did
not think to ask how they did that (forwarding service or change of address)."

The folks that come to this Park will have the USPS forward to the Park's
mailing address. some stay for up to 6 months.
When I first moved her I had the USPS forward mine to General Delivery,
which is good for 6 mos.
So, if you know the address and get permission form the Management ...
or just figure out the zip code and go for the General Delivery.

hankaye

[theeyres]

We used Good Sams service in FL for years when we snowbirded. Worked flawlessly. We did a temporary change of address to Good Sams who would then forward it to us. There is a time lag and I don't think it would work very well for only a month.

You might double check about the Post Office not forwarding to a PO Box at UPS. I don't think they have a problem if you are requesting the forwarding. It is often a big problem for establishing residency or domicile but you are not doing that.

If a park won't accept your mail forwarded to them you can always use General Delivery at a nearby local Post Office.

[floatflyer]

I have a UPS Store PMB. I put in a change of address from my USPS box to the UPS and it was no problem. What they won't do is let you use a change of address to forward mail from the UPS Store or similar PMB if you stop using it. You would probably need to keep the box and forwarding service until you get everything transferred to a new address. I haven't reached that bridge yet.

[BillnDeb]

We were in same boat. We rented a box for 6 months at a package service called Going Postal for $40. Then I put in a temporary change of address to a "suite" and will stop it whenever we decide to go home. I'm having them send it to me twice a month in USPS 2 day mailer (I make sure it fits-you may do it once a week) for only $7.80 to my current campground. So far so good!
Except we missed two notices from Direct TV that they added a MLB sports package so we were charged $32.99 for 2 months...and we're not even home using the system! That's another story!