Canadian Mail Forwarding

[Canuck_Travelle]

I am curious as to how other Canadian Snowbirds are receiving their mail while away in the United States.
We stay in Florida for six months. As it exists now I get my neighbor to forward my mail in self addressed pre-paid envelopes about every couple of months. This is coming to an end as his health is diminishing.
How do others do it? Do some use Canada Post Forwarding and what method and costs?.
I have thought about holding my mail until return as an option as our return allows time for Income Tax Preparation.
Just curious how other Canadian Snowbirds do it and at what costs.
I also have an Account with Canada Revenue Agency in case their are issues so I can check periodically.
Any comments are very welcome, thanks!

[joebedford]

almcc wrote:
our daughter back home who will open and scan the docs and send them to us electronically

Seriously, I think there is a business opportunity here: your mail gets forwarded to 'someone' who will open all first class mail, scan and email to you. Hardcopies available on return. Pay by the sheet - cost of one stamp maybe?

[almcc]

We tried to do some mail forwarding this winter and it didn't work well for us. We attempted to get a P.O. box at the USPS in Borrego Springs California and were told that we needed to bring a house deed to get one! Who carries a house deed with you while on the road? Apparently there are some other documents that would suffice to get a P.O. box but no suggestions were offered. We heard that the post mistress had subsequently been fired because of the large number of complaints from the locals.

We have a house checker that collects the mail for us, next winter we will have her send all "brown envelopes" and other official looking stuff to our daughter back home who will open and scan the docs and send them to us electronically. That will help.

All of this effort results from a (legitimate) call from CRA last winter when we were in Tucson (home phone forwarded) asking to make arrangements to pay $8,000 we owed them from a re-assessment of the previous year's tax filing. Turns out a T-slip from an employer didn't make it through to CRA and when you file electronically they don't see your copy of the T-slip either. They had mailed the re-assessment to me but it wasn't acted upon, was sitting in the mail pile awaiting our return.

[MamaGoose]

Canuck Travellers wrote:

Thanks, we get USPS to forward our mail from Florida back home....no charge & no problems. I guess we Canadians brag about our Medical Care but our Postal System is nothing to brag about just my Humble Opinion! We have been here in South Florida for 13 years, no problems of any kind with USPS, mail on Saturday, filter junk out before forwarding to Canada, nice USPS Reps, what's not to like about USPS! Oh & rates are much better than Canadian even with the Canadian dollar slipping.

I didn't know USPS would forward mail to Canada for no charge. Is there a maximum time that they'll do that? We're in Canada from about the beginning of April to mid to late November...this year we might be later than that getting back to the U.S. in the fall. We had talked to them a couple of years ago about forwarding mail to our Canadian address, and at that time it didn't look like it could be done. I've gone online and had them hold mail when we returned to Canada for Christmas one year, but there's a 30 day maximum to do it that way.

This is our third winter here, and so far we've just put a note in the post office box saying we're away until further notice. We don't get much first class mail here anyway, but we've just made sure that anything we'll need in the summer months gets sent to our Canadian address. (We have provided our Canadian address to anyone in the U.S. who might need to send us mail in the summer months.)

Re the OP's original question (sorry to sidetrack), we have our mail held at our Canadian post office. Our postmaster said there is supposed to be a charge for that, but she hasn't charged us yet. This year she might if there's a huge pile. We pick up our mail at our post office anyway, so it just stays there until we get back. We pay our bills online. We're trying to figure out a way of dealing with income tax returns for subsequent years, as we would like to start staying until the end of April. So far, there are still some info slips that only come by snail mail, but hopefully that will change.

[Canuck_Travelle]

Gruffy wrote:
Can't be rid of Canada Post as long as the government uses them. CPP and OAS T4P's arrive in the mail as do drivers licenses. We spend about $300.00 a year for mail forwarding.

They routinely screw it up and post office numbers are unlisted.... you must call Ottawa. Fortunately we have a personal relationship with a local postal worker who can sort stuff out for us.

If the rest of the world got online I would abandon Canada Post immediately... and trust me ... stay far far away from E-post.

Hmmmm..... I wonder if we changed our mail address for the "hard to turn around ones" like Government CPP, OAS, My Pension T4 to my Florida address if that would work.
The stuff from the ones I need for Income Tax come when I am in Florida like February, March & we leave around April 15th. As I get USPS to forward my mail to Canada when we go home I would get an extraneous ones during the time home like April 15th to Oct 21st.
Really pretty well everything works great electronically like for example Blue Cross Dental work can be paid by Visa & reimbursed thru the internet. I even pay my snow clearing home when necessary by email for $1.50 This might be a way to do it. It sure would weed out sending packets via my neighbor and USPS forwarding is free.
Drivers license can be renewed when home and the Vehicle Registration stickers can be sent to Florida (I do that now) or have them expire when in Canada.

[Gruffy]

Can't be rid of Canada Post as long as the government uses them. CPP and OAS T4P's arrive in the mail as do drivers licenses. We spend about $300.00 a year for mail forwarding.

They routinely screw it up and post office numbers are unlisted.... you must call Ottawa. Fortunately we have a personal relationship with a local postal worker who can sort stuff out for us.

If the rest of the world got online I would abandon Canada Post immediately... and trust me ... stay far far away from E-post.

[Canuck_Travelle]

joebedford wrote:
We have forwarded to the USA but it's expensive and slow (Thanks Canada Post). Now we forward to a friend who will send anything important to us. Guess what? There wasn't anything important. We do everything online.

Income tax slips are waiting for us - we'll file when we get home. Hopefully every company will shift to electronic slips and we won't have to worry about them either.

Hi joebedford; we do quite well with our Income Tax Slips as we are with TD so all Portfolio slips are on-line from them, works really great but my Retirement T4 comes from Bell Aliant and for retirees that is not available, apparently it is for full time employees so I guess I got to work on getting that changed. As I said before my aim is to completely remove Canada Post from my life!
Thanks for the reply.

[joebedford]

We have forwarded to the USA but it's expensive and slow (Thanks Canada Post). Now we forward to a friend who will send anything important to us. Guess what? There wasn't anything important. We do everything online.

Income tax slips are waiting for us - we'll file when we get home. Hopefully every company will shift to electronic slips and we won't have to worry about them either.

[Canuck_Travelle]

Falcon35 wrote:
We no longer try to get our mail from home. We do our banking on the internet and have arranged to have most of our bills are debited to our bank account. We can see everything on the web and check things first thing every morning. At home we live in a condo and have have a neighbour pick up our mail. She would check for a special letter if we need to. Early on we had a daughter package up our mail and it didn't get to us for several weeks and the package was ripped.

Thanks we do that too as we get our neighbor across the road to package up the mail but as I said before his health is ailing & we need to change somewhat, possibly we will do like you and get rid of the very last of our mail to the Internet, it is about 90% now so got to get rid of a few more items, thanks!

[Falcon35]

We no longer try to get our mail from home. We do our banking on the internet and have arranged to have most of our bills are debited to our bank account. We can see everything on the web and check things first thing every morning. At home we live in a condo and have have a neighbour pick up our mail. She would check for a special letter if we need to. Early on we had a daughter package up our mail and it didn't get to us for several weeks and the package was ripped.

[Canuck_Travelle]

JoyceP wrote:
The first year we Snowbird to Florida I went to the sub Canada Post to forward our mail to my daughter's place (20 blocks away). They charged me $36 and didn't do it. My daughter went to our house a week after we left and the mail box was full. I also told the carrier we would be away. When I leave Florida there is no charge at USPS and they forward to Canada. GO FIGURE! After our Canada Post experience we cut a mail slot in the door and my daughter collects it when in the area. No more mail box and $36 for nothing.

Good luck!

Thanks, we get USPS to forward our mail from Florida back home....no charge & no problems. I guess we Canadians brag about our Medical Care but our Postal System is nothing to brag about just my Humble Opinion! We have been here in South Florida for 13 years, no problems of any kind with USPS, mail on Saturday, filter junk out before forwarding to Canada, nice USPS Reps, what's not to like about USPS! Oh & rates are much better than Canadian even with the Canadian dollar slipping.

[JoyceP]

The first year we Snowbird to Florida I went to the sub Canada Post to forward our mail to my daughter's place (20 blocks away). They charged me $36 and didn't do it. My daughter went to our house a week after we left and the mail box was full. I also told the carrier we would be away. When I leave Florida there is no charge at USPS and they forward to Canada. GO FIGURE! After our Canada Post experience we cut a mail slot in the door and my daughter collects it when in the area. No more mail box and $36 for nothing.

Good luck!