Snowbirding and Mail

[aza455]

What’s the collective wisdom as to how to handle mail during the 3-6 months of Snowbirding? Do you forward it, do you ask a neighbor to collect it?

Would love to hear from those who does the Snowbirding regularly.

 

[Ronstar]

We had our first class only mail forwarded to a box at a nearby UPS store. Our local post office threw away our junk mail. Did that for 3 months a year. UPS store clerks would email us when we got mail.

Before that we had our mail held at the local PO and had a friend pick it up monthly. The PO disallowed this after several winters, so we went to the forward to UPS method.

 

[youbet]

There's a big difference between 3 months and 6 months. At 6 months I'd have it forwarded if I was in a stable location.

We've been going for 7 - 8 weeks. (This year is undetermined if we go at all.) Because we're in our camper and moving around, forwarding is not practical. Our long time neighbors and good friends collect it for us. Our son gets it from them every week or so when he's over to snowblow the driveway or just check on the place. He goes through it and lets us know what's there. Sometimes we're waiting for some particular thing and put him on the lookout for it. It's worked fine so far.

 

[calmloki]

We have our mail forwarded for almost 6 months at a time. Last couple years delivery has been kinda random, supposedly a function of fill-in workers being put on our short route. Too often we would have moderately important things delivered in error to our mailbox up north rather than getting forwarded. This year I taped the mailbox closed with a "please forward" note prominently displayed under the clear tape. That seems to be working.
Best practice is to have as much as possible on auto-pay or available online. Collecting tax documents from banks is problematic - some don't have online 1099s and put "do not forward" on their envelopes.

 

[f35phixer]

first time snow birding, My wonderful friend collects the mail and we talk once a week. Mail, nope, throw in trash, repeat !!! about every two weeks she'll mail to us..

 

[pb4uski]

What’s the collective wisdom as to how to handle mail during the 3-6 months of Snowbirding? Do you forward it, do you ask a neighbor to collect it?

Would love to hear from those who does the Snowbirding regularly.

All of our vendors and contacts have our Florida address... for the 5 or so month that we are in Vermont we have our mail forwarded to Vermont.

When we are away from Vermont we actually take our mailbox down and put it in our garage... and then put it back up when we return to Vermont. we live in a small town and the postman and post office employees know us and know how to get a hold of us if something odd were to happen and we needed to know.

All of that said, we go paperless as much as possible.

 

[rk911]

we use a mail forwarding service (America's Mailbox, Box Elder, SD). most of our really important mail was converted to e-mail years ago but there are still a few things that come only by USPS. all of that is forwarded to our box in SD. they hold it and send it to us either upon request (we tend to move around) or on a schedule we design. they have different levels of service. one of those is they will scan the envelopes for me so i can pick and choose what tox receive. i get the same info from via the USPS Informed Delivery Service.

 

[calmloki]

....
When we are away from Vermont we actually take our mailbox down and put it in our garage... and then put it back up when we return to Vermont......
All of that said, we go paperless as much as possible.

Taking the mailbox away sounds real good - before I 2" clear packing taped our box I had wrapped it in 4" shrinkwrap tape - and the Gal saw a postal drone ignore the "please forward" sign and shove mail past the edge of the wrap. She called him on it and he was just - "Ehh - not my normal route". Wow. Most of the delivery people are great, but there are a few....

 

[harley]

Our FL address is our permanent address, but we spend up to 6 months or so at other locations too. I've tried various processes over the years, with varying levels of success.

I used to do permanent changes of address back and forth, and that worked great. But then a couple of years ago the post office started notifying banks and credit card companies of the change, which caused them to change our billing address on the cards, leading to rejected charges at places that ask for your zip code. And even if I sign onto the the credit card and change it back they just do it again the next month. So I had to quit that.

Since then I've been using temporary change of addresses, which mostly works pretty well and is what I would recommend for the OP's situation. But in our case, there are problems. The post office down in FL is pretty crappy, and it often takes 2-3 weeks for them to forward the mail. I have USPS Informed Delivery, so I see when it's ready to be delivered, and can then keep track of how long it takes to get to me. If it ever does. For the last few years we seldom have gotten much important snail mail, but this year we turned 65 and have been getting a bunch of Medicare and retiree medical mail that I couldn't switch to email right away. So the physical mail has become a bit more important.

And recently I had a piece of mail that was returned to sender with a stamp on it saying something like No Such Address or something. So I'm pretty unhappy about all that.

On top of that, I can no longer do a temporary change of address from our second home back to the primary, to handle anything that comes to that address. I could until last year, but now to do a CoA online you have to sign on and it defaults to your primary address. I haven't found a way around this one yet.

I've been looking into the mail handling companies like America's Mailbox. I like the idea, but I'm not sure about them opening and scanning our mail. And I'm not quite sure how the pricing works. But I think that's the next option since the post office is working hard to make it not work for snowbirds. If anyone has any strong recommendations for that I'd appreciate hearing them.

 

[rk911]

....I've been looking into the mail handling companies like America's Mailbox. I like the idea, but I'm not sure about them opening and scanning our mail. And I'm not quite sure how the pricing works. But I think that's the next option since the post office is working hard to make it not work for snowbirds. If anyone has any strong recommendations for that I'd appreciate hearing them.

just speaking about our experience with America's Mailbox.

IMO the odds of them opening your mail are about the same as a postal worker opening your mail...very, very low. what mail they did forward to us was unopened and exactly matched what we were seeing on our USPS Informed Delivery. IIRC they have 3-levels of service, gold/silver/bronze. their webisite explains it pretty clearly and, IMO, their telephone support is very good.

one thing i learned about a temporary forward. if you do it on paper at the USPS you need to file that at least 2-full weeks ahead if your departure date. online takes effect sooner. America's Mailbox recommends not filing COA online.

there are many mail forwarding companies and they all work in much the same way but it pays to shop around and compare pricing and options.

 

[Sunset]

We forward to a relatives place.
It mostly works.
The postal worker taped a note inside the mailbox (ours has a door) that said "VACANT".

An official mail letter from another country came in the online viewing, and then disappeared.
To me "VACANT" is not the same as "FORWARD" , but our worker is stupid, and her note probably mislead replacement workers.

I also don't want a note on the mailbox, as a thief only has to look at the mailbox to know they can break in anytime.

 

[Montecfo]

I also don't want a note on the mailbox, as a thief only has to look at the mailbox to know they can break in anytime.

Yeah, the folks that said they tape theirs shut or put a big sign in it, that seems a large risk to me.

I always thought the mail scanners or friend neighbor old school pickup was the gold standard.

I do look forward to travelling so much that this is a problem.

 

[drb391]

I have mine fwded to the RV park I'm at winters. take the house-mounted mailbox off. ~2wks before return, I change the fwd to hold so I don't cross paths with mail on trip home

 

[kcowan]

We have Canada Post forward to a mailbox in Laredo TX. From there, UPS trucks it our shared mailbox in PV MX 3x a week.

All our time-sensitive Mail is received online.

 

[drb391]

one thing I've noticed is that renewal CCs are not fwd-able. when I knew that it would happen during my fwding time, I changed address w/CC co to relative; had them send to me under cover when it arrived. ALSO had to remember to use rels zip for gas pumps, etc til I changed it back

 

[calmloki]

one thing I've noticed is that renewal CCs are not fwd-able. when I knew that it would happen during my fwding time, I changed address w/CC co to relative; had them send to me under cover when it arrived. ALSO had to remember to use rels zip for gas pumps, etc til I changed it back

PITA, but I give the California address at the card web site as home address when I expect a card to be shipped, then swap back to my Oregon primary address after getting the card.

 

[drb391]

PITA, but I give the California address at the card web site as home address when I expect a card to be shipped, then swap back to my Oregon primary address after getting the card.

tried to do that, but winter address is POB. they wont accept changing address to POB

 

[Nick12]

I know some with a FL PO Box . The post office has to hold your mail even if your PO Box fills up. If you have a neighbor you trust you can give them a spare key to check the box while you are living elsewhere.

 

[SnowballCamper]

We had a months long trip planned for last summer (naturally it didn't happen) but I did get a mailbox to hold the mail for the entire trip: https://www.fortknoxmailbox.com/product/the-vacationer/
Nowadays, anything time sensitive can be done on email much more efficiently. And I got the paper karma app to reduce junk mail with moderate success.

 

[Leo1277]

We have been playing the forward game for snowbirding in Florida for many years. After trying many options, we settled on USPS "temporary forward" for up to six months at a time, and have USPS informed delivery (daily email with scans of most most mail pieces) set up for both locations. Starting and stopping the forwarding is easy to do online, with the wrinkle that we always have to set up two separate orders since DW and I have different last names. Over the years we have been doing this, perhaps around 10% of forwarded mail just mysteriously disappears between point A and point B, and despite various attempts to try to understand it or perhaps find a pattern, there doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason to what affects it and what doesn't. (Junk mail is anyway not being forwarded, and we get as much stuff electronically as possible)

Since March, we have been in Florida nearly continuously as we just w*rk remotely from here (OMY syndrome), and the loss rate has been higher during this Covid time. And what is particularly annoying, many mail pieces were delayed for literally months. I scanned all those that were delayed more than three months to keep a running record, and there are now around 10 of these. Seeing such ridiculous delays first hand, I was particularly worried about voting by mail, but that seemed to have worked and the ballots were successfully counted.

 

[Leo1277]

...
On top of that, I can no longer do a temporary change of address from our second home back to the primary, to handle anything that comes to that address. I could until last year, but now to do a CoA online you have to sign on and it defaults to your primary address. I haven't found a way around this one yet.
...

We had that problem too, but the way around this is to set up two separate USPS accounts with different login information, one for each home. This allows you to set up all variations of forwarding. One issue is that some browsers keep you logged in and it can be a bit tricky to switch from one USPS account to the other. You can usually solve that by using private tabs or (as I do in Firefox), Container Tabs.

 

[rk911]

tried to do that, but winter address is POB. they wont accept changing address to POB

i spoke with our CC cust. svc. last week (Discover, Citi) and was told they will send replacement or renewal cards to our winter address provided we alert them by phone prior to the cards being sent.

 

[harley]

We had that problem too, but the way around this is to set up two separate USPS accounts with different login information, one for each home. This allows you to set up all variations of forwarding. One issue is that some browsers keep you logged in and it can be a bit tricky to switch from one USPS account to the other. You can usually solve that by using private tabs or (as I do in Firefox), Container Tabs.

Sweet! I love sneaky solutions to stupid problems. I can't see a reason this one won't work. I'll give it a try. Thanks.

 

[kcowan]

tried to do that, but winter address is POB. they wont accept changing address to POB

Our PO box is apartment 130156 and 130 means PV MX and 156 is the box number. Laredo TX

 

[rk911]

Pv. Mx