Part Timer Mail Question

[redandsilver]

I know this is the full timing section of the forum - but my question is for a Part Timer.

I'm planning on snowbirding for about 4 month's in FL this Winter.  Since this will be my very first time to do this in my MH I'm not sure what to expect yet.

I have heard that if I use USPS to forward mail it is hard to stop them forwarding it when I move back home.  I had used them before but it was for 19 months and it was from my house to a house in NV - I had to change some addresses back when I moved back but I don't remember any big issues with most mail making it back to me in my home State.

But this will be for a much shorter time - AND YES I have most of my bills paid via the internet or auto payments but not everything yet.  So there might be a few things in the 4 months that I need to receive so I can either send a check or call them for a CC or Debt payment.  Not to mention getting the FMCA magazine. 

I don't have anyone near that can send me my mail - because my neighbor is going to FL too.

So my question is for a short 4 month stay in FL would you use USPS or some other forwarding service?   ONE nice thing about using USPS is my mailman told me they don't forward junk mail.

[wayne77590]

We used USPS a couple times. What they did was pack up the mail in one of their boxes and mail it to the address we gave them. They would send it out on a Wednesday and we always received it on the following Friday.   When we left that address and headed home we just put a hold on the mail, picked it up when we got home and started service again.  Never had a problem but most likely that can be different from geographic post office to post office. 

[tbutler]

It sounds to me as though the USPS forwarding should work fine for you with one exception.  The USPS does not forward magazines.  For the FMCA Magazine or any other, you would have to change the address with the magazine distributor.  That can take time to go into effect.  They print labels or send mailing lists to printers months in advance in many cases.  I would contact the magazine by phone to determine how they prefer to handle this.  Given the decline in magazine readership in recent years, they should be willing to do most anything for a regular reader.

The alternative is to read the on-line version of your magazines.

[rossboyer]

USPS has Premium Mail Forwarding Service.  It is $20 a week plus a one time setup fee.  They will Priority ship anything including magazines and catalogs to your temporary location.  For ours they ship one Wednesday afternoon from Indiana and we receive on Friday, two days later.  A couple of times it has been Saturday.  This service is for one location.  You cannot travel to a different location and have the USPS forward to the second location.  We just set up ours to put on hold while we are traveling to Arizona, then they ship for 21 weeks, put on hold again while we travel back and resume delivery at our home.

[rockylarson]

Using USPS "Forwarding" and USPS "Premium Forwarding Service" are two drastically different programs.

USPS forwarding options

I highly recommend PFS.  I suggest you visit your local PO and talk with the PM that handles this service in your town.   The online signup is rather structured when it comes to stop and start dates, holds before and after and any mid-trip changes that need to be made. A phone call or email to the person actually batching and sending your mail adds some flexibility to the process.

[ispjs]

Wow, our experiences with USPS (United States Postal Service) sure has been different from some of the above information.  The last couple of years we have had our mail forwarded from our Florida home to our son's home up north.   We travel for 4 or 5 months but he manages all of our mail that comes to his residence.  We simply go online and set everything up with USPS and it costs $1.00.  They forward all first class mail, including our magazines.  They don't ever "box" mail up together and send it on a certain day, it just gets forwarded as it comes into our Florida post office.   When we are a couple of weeks from getting back to our Florida home we go online and put a hold on our mail, that way nothing ends up getting sent up north after we are gone.

I think the rules are pretty straight forward with USPS when doing it online.  You can only have it forwarded less than 6 months.  Now there may be some type of "Premium" plan they offer but we have just used their run of the mill paid-for-with-our-tax-dollars forwarding service and it has worked great!