USPS mail forwarding vs ???

[DOTLDaddy]

This winter, we are going to be snowbirding for three months down on the gulf. We have never been out that long, and have previously had our daughter take care of our mail for us. As we are also Escapees, we thought we would use their mail forwarding service, or Good Sam's, but I just noticed that the USPS offers a service as well, up to 365 days to a temporary, new address:

https://www.usps.com/manage/forward-mail.htm

Does anyone have any experience using the USPS service, or how does it compare to the services offered by the Escapees and Good Sam?:@

[ventrman]

We use a UPS Mailbox for our Mail. We are satisfied with it.

[rockhillmanor]

darsben wrote:
It is going to depend on your postman.
Where I am there is no permanent employee assigned to our route so we get temporary subs.

We used to have mail forwarded from our S&B to where we are in the summer. We would come home to find lots of mail in our S&B mailbox. Never could get the lazy supervisors to get up and supervise the temps so had to stop using USPS forwarding service.

That happens when you set up temp forwarding with your "local" post office.

A lot has changed since the inception of the USPS being on line.
Now almost all the post offices can not set up forwarding and "require" you do it on line.

When the forwarding is set up on line, The mail is then forwarded 'right at the main post office' and never even goes to your local post office to get screwed up. So ALL your mail is forwarded correctly until you stop it and/or the time limit expires.

My stupid post office told me they would not temp forward my mail from my PO box. WRONG. Went on line and had it forwarded for 4 months and could renew that 4 months.

I use the USPS website for all my mail issues and I am no longer held hostage by controlling cranky local postal workers who think they have more power than they do! :B

[Johno02]

We have our mail held at the postoffice, and a desiginated close friend goes by every two weeks or so and picks it up for us. She checks to see if anything looks important enough to call us about, chucks garbage, and holds the rest for us. We have very little mail, as most bills and payments are online.

[2oldman]

NHIrish wrote:
Set all of your bills to auto pay and electronic delivery of statements...and forget about it....works for us for three months at a time.

^^ this

[C-Bears]

Our son's address is our permanent mailing address. When we are out on the road, which is about 8 out of 12 months, he forwards our mail about every 2 or 3 weeks.

We leave him the large soft stamped envelopes to use. We try to do 100% of our stuff on-line but we still get some mail.

[NHIrish]

Set all of your bills to auto pay and electronic delivery of statements...and forget about it....works for us for three months at a time.

[deereone]

We have used the USPS forwarding service for over 10 years. You can have the mail forwarded to any address that will accept it (some campgrounds, another home address etc.) We go to the same area each winter and have a P.O. box there. So we have our home mail forwarded to the P.O. Box. Only problem we have had is several times at the beginning our post office where the box is will reject our forwarded mail and send it back to our home address, of course when that returned mail gets back home it is again forwarded to the P.O. box. 2 or 3 times we have had our mail go around in circles for over 3 weeks before we could get it straightened out. What we learned to do is as soon as we get to our winter area, notify the post office where our box is to open our box to allow mail to come there. It's not suppose to be necessary to do that, but it works. As someone else said all mail will not get forwarded, so if you should have any mail that is stamped do not forward you will not get it.

[darsben]

It is going to depend on your postman.
Where I am there is no permanent employee assigned to our route so we get temporary subs.

We used to have mail forwarded from our S&B to where we are in the summer. We would come home to find lots of mail in our S&B mailbox. Never could get the lazy supervisors to get up and supervise the temps so had to stop using USPS forwarding service.

[Dutch_12078]

The USPS forwarding service can work well IF you're going to be staying in one location. If you're going to move to other locations from time to time, the RV specific mail services are better suited for forwarding mail on request to RV park and PO general delivery addresses. Some will even scan your mail on request, letting you decide if it needs to be forwarded or can be discarded.

[rockhillmanor]

Does anyone have any experience using the USPS service, or how does it compare to the services offered by the Escapees and Good Sam?

Hands down the US mail forwarding. Your mail comes into the main post office in the state you live in and then immediately and DIRECTLY goes to you where you are at.

There are huge time delays and many people handling your mail using Escapees and GS. I respect Escapees but you do have to pay for it. And GS? I would not let THEM touch anything!

YUP. You can use the regular government United states postal service to have your mail forwarded for FREE.

It's on line. fill it out and for 4 months they will forward your mail. If you need it for more than 4 months just go back on line and request 4 more months.

Just be SURE to mark "TEMPORARY" forwarding.

I have been using this service for years now. Real slick and you know you will receive all your mail in a timely fashion for FREE.

[Dog_Folks]

I have had a private mail forwarding service for 8 years now.

I have had my mail forwarded to me about 96 times now.

95 times I used FedEx. Not a single problem.

One time, I used USPS to save a few bucks. They lost it.

[charlysmom_dad]

I've never used theother mail services, so I can't compare.
We've used the premium forwarding service for a few years now, when we snowbird in Florida. Our mail carrier packs up all of our mail, puts it in the box & sends it to us once a week. Works very well. As you can see in your link, it is a bit pricey. This works for us because we stay in one place for the 3 months we're down there.

We have been using a post office box in Florida. This year, we're going to have it sent directly to our campground. This way, we can set it up online.

When we first started to snowbird, we used the free usps forwarding. You hand in a temporary change of address. They send your mail to you. The problem was, they don't send everything. If an envelope says " do not forward" or " return service requested" etc, they return it to the sender. We missed doctor bills, some tax information, etc. (We try to get things sent to us online, not everybody is onboard with that yet)

We've had no problems with the premium forward service.