Mail Hold--What do you do?

Nowadays, why do you need your mail? Set up your bills with AutoPay and you never have to think about them.

My local P.O. will hold first class mail for 30 days and tosses "junk mail". That saves me the trouble of tossing it. I just fill out a 30 day "Hold" card or cards and have a friend pick it up once a month and turn in a new hold card that I fill out before I leave. I don't get much 1st class mail since I set up my monthly payments to auto pay the balances all year through my bank.
On my drive to Alaska, I was gone all summer without any problems.

You can put in your hold online, it works great. Put in a hold for about half the time and get someone to pick it up. Then put in another hold.

I have a sweet heart of a carrier. she held it until we got home then brought it all out to the house for us.

I have not done this but several people I know have stopped their mail for 30 days, then sent in another card to hold it for another 30 days. They were told the card / hold request was only good for 30 days at a time so they sent in the second card. Worked for them.

Our postmaster said the same thing when we went for 6 weeks, he'd hold it the extra 2 weeks. When we got home we found the mail had restarted after 30 days, so much for the postmaster.

Headed out for 8 weeks come Sept, was thinking of holding it for 30, then have the neighbor pick it up and hold it again as you can do it online. I haven't checked to see if it's legit yet.

Son gets mail on long trips. They know him. He has a checkbook to pay bills. The 30 days re-starts when he picks up the mail. Kinda like family round here.

Before we switched to a more permanent RV oriented forwarding service, we had our mail forwarded to our daughter for 2 or 3 months at a time while we traveled. She would look it over and alert us to anything that might require more immediate attention than waiting for our return.

You can also do a 'temporary' change of address.

My MIL does that and has it sent from Florida to NY. She stops when passing through a couple of times a summer and picks up the mail.

She has done this for 6 month period.

travelzoo wrote:
Talk to your mail carrier not the Postmaster, the carrier may do it for you.

we did this and carrier said no problem he would hold as long as needed only problem was they changed his route after we left and new carrier only did the thirty days. good thing we have a large locked mail box.