[Greg]

We travel for work and change addresses a lot. We have used premium mail forwarding at the USPS. After the initial setup, it’s less than $25/ week.

But they forward everything, packages also, once a week usually Wednesday.

Been doing it this way for 11 years.

Just need to call in to hold the mail if you’re moving around and to let them know the next address.

[Archived]

Didn’t know the USPS had “premium service”. Anything close to $25 sounds like quite a bit.

I think the USPS is missing the boat and a good source of revenue. The last three years we spent 78, 100, and 100 continuous days on the road.

First year I talked to the local UPS franchisee. They suggested I get four or five 30 day temporary hold forms giving them the authorization to pick up our mail. They filed a new one every 30 days (they are at the PO every day, its only a block from their store front). Towards the middle of 78 days a new (young) postmaster arrived on the scene. I got a call from the UPS store owner … new guy said that we were doing was illegal, couldn’t chain the 30 day holds/pickups together. She gave him our phone number and said to call me. He called. Told me what we were doing was illegal and they wouldn’t honor the arrangement any longer. I told him we were in the middle of nowhere, wouldn’t be home for months, his employees had accepted the forms in good faith (UPS said they had other customers doing this very same thing), and if they refused to honor the arrangement I would have ALL my mail forwarded to the USP store. He countered that he didn’t think we could forward to a business. I said I didn’t want to turn this into World War III over getting my mail forwarded, but my law firm in Milwaukee would unravel it for me. Suddenly he relented and said they would honor the arrangement through the end of our trip and then we’d have to figure something else out.

Second year I talked to the UPS owner, she said she had ten or twelve customers who were in same boat. I went to post office. Postmaster wasn’t available, but the counter person knew who I was. She said they’d been doing the hold/UPS pickup for years; but a new broom swept differently. She said, “Temporarily forward your mail to UPS.” I said, “But that would require you to put a sticker on every piece of my mail.” She shrugged her shoulders and said, “They do that in Milwaukee, not the local office.” So I forwarded the mail to UPS, would call them to ship our mail to our next stop, and we were good. Lots of forwarding stickers got put on the mail!

Third year we had Cathie’s son and DIL living in the house. They handled it.

Sadly the USPS is missing the boat. I’ll bet if Jon’s daughter ran the USPS it would have a better product!

[al]

She’s got a full plate, but since I don’t see any dues money in my future and my veggies aren’t growing now maybe I should just take over the USPS. I could use the money. Prior to starting Jamestown Advanced I used to buy and restore bankrupt businesses (they were cheap and that was all I could afford) so if FedEx and UPS can compete and make money I don’t see why the USPS can’t.

Maybe it is just me, but the starting point is going to be the service and attitude from the employees behind the counter.

[Ronald]

USPS premium service for $25 per week is $1300 per year. I do not pay anywhere near that for Escapees.

I do get premium service at Escapees.

[Roy]

They have cheaper services. But we pay for the premium to make sure we get all our mail. Hate to see a forward sticker fall off and you miss something important. We still have our house and don’t full time, but are on the road upwards of 9 months a year. They package up a weeks worth of mail and send it to whatever address we give them including, like I mentioned before, packages.

If we want them to hold the mail until we get where we going, it’s not a problem.

The USPS is actually really profitable, except for the government taking profits off the top and leaving them scraps to operate on. Especially now that UPS & FEDEX both drop off their packages at the Post office and let them deliver them.

Then when we are home, we let them know and it starts coming to our house daily again.

It may not be for everyone, but we’ve had good luck using them for 11 years and they haven’t lost our mail.