Mail Service? What's available?

What mail wouldn’t a trusted neighbor be allowed to open, scan and send?

If staying in one place, we use USPS free forwarding service, as mentioned above.

When on a long road trip, we pay our neighbor to collect our mail, look through it (without opening it) and let us know if she sees anything she thinks might be important. She contacts us and I tell her what to do (nothing or mail to us at a certain location, open and scan/email to us). Most of our mail can wait until we get back. I have all of our regular bills on auto pay.

I was wondering....if you use a mail service, wouldn't you have to change your address to their address then back to your own when you return, or forward your mail to their address so they can forward it to you, wherever you are? IMO a mail service seems appropriate for full-timers, but not for those of us who go away for a few months at a time and still have a residence.

We use the Goodsam mail service when we go to Alaska. They are here in Florida.

Goodsam Mail Service

What we like is they will scan any mail and email it. They trash all of the junk mail. Only once a month or so do we have them forward the actual mail to us.

Ken

When we spent our three or four months in Florida each winter, all I did was go to the USPS web site and chose the Regular Mail Forwarding Service. There was no cost to do this and they sent all of our regular mail. They will only send the first couple of months of magazines as far as I remember.

They have a premium service that does cost money each month but we never used it or needed it.
All you do is put in your start date and end date and that is about it. We never had a single problem doing it that way.

This all depends on you staying in a place for some time. If you are constantly on the move it will not work. There may be another type service for that but I know nothing about it.

Hope this helps. :)
Barney

Dakota post offers month to month as an option.
www.dakotapost.net