Winter Mail Forwarding

As Dutch 12078 says, if you have usps do the temporary, free forwarding, you may not get all your mail.

We only got 2 months of magazines. Anything in an envelope that says " do not forward" or " return service requested" etc, was not forwarded.

We missed credit card renewels, doctor bills (not all our doctors billed online) and some tax information.

After that fiasco, we used the usps premium forwarding. It was pricey, but we got all our mail.

One thing to be aware of when using a temporary forwarding order, is the possibility that you may miss some important mail. A few years ago before we switched to a fulltime mail service, we used to forward our mail to our daughter when we were gone more than a few weeks. During that time, our bank sent out my renewal debit card in a "Do not forward" envelope, and when it was returned, they cancelled my card even though my existing card had about a month to go before it expired. When I called the bank on it, all I got was a "Those are the rules..." story, with no way to get a new card until we returned. Fortunately, my wife's card still worked, so we weren't completely shut out of our account. We also had some insurance papers returned for the same reason one year, but at least in that case, the agent called us to see what was going on, and simply resent them in an unrestricted envelope. Just something to keep in mind...

Hi,

Do you have a neighbor or close friend that can take your mail? You can have it forwarded to your kids place, or other address for a time, then change it back to your house later. Your home will still get all the 'resident' mail at your home, and you probably can have a neighbor kid take that to the trash, or save it for your later sorting and trash it.

You can also rent a mailbox at someplace like the UPS store. Then forward all your bills and important stuff to that mailbox, and anything else can sit inside a really big mailbox at your home. You can buy a king size locking mailbox - about 16" square, and hold a lot of junk mail in it, empty it 3 months later.

The UPS store can be given instructions, or you can call weekly and ask them to forward what you desire, and keep the rest there for your return. They can forward it to another UPS store in the state you are visiting, or something like 'general delivery Quartzsite AZ". However Quartzsite is such a popular place to collect mail, that the line is REALLY long! You might pick another nearby city.



Good luck,

Fred.

If you are staying in one place you can just do a temporary forward with the post office. We have ours forwarded from late December to mid-March.