Forwarding mail whom gone?
 

We are planning for TV bring our primary residence but maybe going back to Texas for 2 months around the holidays or a month in the summer etc. what is the best way to handle mail? Do you have the post office forward it or hold it? Thanks

Forwarding mail
 

We have forwarded mail in two directions for 17 years. Simple process done online and never had any difficulty getting our mail at both addresses. I wouldn't want to hold most of the mail for 2 months. There must be important mail that shouldn't be left that long.

The best solution is to have a neighbor pick it up and send or email to you only the important stuff. Using the USPS forwarding system for a month or so can create potential problems and delays.

USPS has a service where they will send your mail to another address once a week (via Priority Mail) but it is kind of pricey. We did that when we were snowbirding in FL for 2 to 3 months at a time. For a month I would just arrange for the mail to be held for pickup when you return. Once you get settled you might be able to arrange for a nice neighbor to get your mail every day (since they have to pick up their own anyway) and let you know if there is any first class mail that looks important. Also, it helps if you set up all your bills for paperless and autopay. Since we did that we get very little physical mail.

Good luck with your move and welcome to TV!

kathy

We have used the PO standard forwarding for 12 years with no problem. It sometimes seams to be a slow process. Feels like they accumulate it for a few days before forwarding. I recommend you pay all your bills automatically either by charge card or bank eft. Do not mix using the same charge card between auto pay and gas, restaurant or any other more risky usage. That way there is less change of card fraud resulting in you having to change card nos. for your auto payments. Also change over to paperless statements but be sure to check them monthly. Welcome to the Villages.

when we were 'snow bunnies' (hopping back and forth every few weeks) we'd just put the mail on hold.

when we became 'snow birds' (staying in FL for long periods of time), we'd have the mail forwarded to us in FL.
the tricky part was timing the cut off...we always had some mail that seemed to get forwarded to FL after
we had left. Fortunately a neighbor would pick it up and mail it up to us

then we smartened up and bypassed the USPS as much as possible by going 'green' with everything we could, as many bills as possible now go directly to a credit card or a draw from our checking...which significantly lessened the risk of incurring a late charge fee when we were traveling (which we did a lot before covid-19). It's pretty easy to identify which bills you can't direct to a credit card (like taxes) and will still be coming via regular 'snail mail'...those are easy to figure out when they are due....some of those we pay early before we travel because we could, others we knew that we'd have plenty of time to pay when we returned, or they wouldn't be sent out for awhile, so we just put a 'hold on the mail'. With online banking it's easy to pay a credit card bill from where ever.

A bunch of great tips thanks. I wasn’t sure if the USPS had a limit on forwarding but that sounds great! Thanks

Starting two winters ago, The USPS would not hold our mail for longer than one month.
I would place a hold for 30 days, have the mail delivered to my address, then my neighbor would pick up the mail, and I would start a new 30 day cycle. USPS offers a service at no charge where they send you a picture each day of your first class mail. That way you know if you get something unexpected and can take action. We also try to have most of our bills paid automatically through our bank and we get electronic bills.

You can Hold mail for up to 30 days. You can Forward mail for up to 6 months, then renew it for another 6 months. We've done both. Allow up to a couple weeks on either end for start/stop delays. Autopay is your friend.

Fwd mail
 

The best with today, forwarding is pathetic.
Sing up for email notifications with USPS.com and get notified of everything in your mail on a daily basis. The delivery is getting to be less desirable in efficiency. I here daily that forwarding takes 7-10 days.
Call the providers and change your address before you leave and when you return.
Who cares about the junk mail...

I have forwarded mail in two directions 4 times a year for 12 years. Simple process done online at the USPS site. I never had any difficulty getting my mail at both addresses even though I make two round trips each year.

We are snowbirds and have our mail forwarded. Try to pay everything online as much as possible. One thing about mail forwarding, the Post Office doesn’t forward magazines. You have to notify the magazine directly to have the address changed and typically you have to do it one-two months in advance.

Start mail forwarding a few days before you leave, it takes about a week to get to me on the west coast. I also stop the msil forwarding 2 weeks before I come back and have it held for those 2 weeks. I leave for 2 or 3 months twice each year and this works great for me. I also have the USPS send me photos of what's in my mail, so I know what's coming and can look for it.
All works great for me and I don't have to rely on a neighbor.

We are snowbirds, in The Villages for 5 months and in Michigan 7 months. Based on our experience, I have some recommendations for mail forwarding.

First, set up either email delivery of many of your bills (e.g. credit cards, cable, utilities) or set up EFT for them. The forwarding process is sometimes very slow and bills may not arrive before the due date.

Second, use the US Post Office web site to enter your forwarding request. Using the web site cost $1 but at least you know it was entered and the dates and forwarding address are correct. We used to send in the post card, which is free, but had some bad experiences when the info was entered into their computer incorrectly. By using the web site at least you will know what is entered into the post office computer system. It always amazes me that it cost me money for saving the post office from doing something they have to pay someone else to do, but that is the process.

Third, set your start and stop dates with enough lead time for mail that will be in the pipeline. We usually set the START forwarding date about 5 days before we leave. That way, any mail that has already been processed will arrive before we leave. And STOP forwarding about 10 days before you plan to leave. That way any mail that has already been processed and directed to the new address will arrive before you leave. It really does take around 10 days or so for forwarded mail to arrive vs. the 2-3 days for mail sent directly to the new address.

Fourth, for mail that you expect to receive on a regular basis (e.g. credit cards, cable, utilities, bank statements) , use their company web site and change your address on their Profile page. That way, this mail will be sent directly to your new address and avoid the long forwarding lead time delay. Then, before you return, use the company web site and change your address back.

Finally, be aware that the post office will only forward magazines for a month or 2 (can't remember what it is but it is not long). So if you are going to be gone longer than that, make sure you go to the company web site and change your address on their Profile page or contact them by phone. That way, this mail will be sent directly to your new address. Then, before you return, use the company web site or phone again and change your address back.

If you are only going for two months I wouldn’t forward it. The forwarding process is very slow and by the time you start getting your mail you will be heading home. Have a neighbor pick it as previously recommended.

Quote:

Fourth, for mail that you expect to receive on a regular basis (e.g. credit cards, cable, utilities, bank statements) , use their company web site and change your address on their Profile page. That way, this mail will be sent directly to your new address and avoid the long forwarding lead time delay. Then, before you return, use the company web site and change your address back. End quote

In my opinion, if you are going to go into the company website to change your address this often, why not use the company’s paperless billing feature? Why get these items in the mail when you can see them easily online, and print for yourself the items you think you need a copy of? Save paper, time and stamps!

First off – nothing you do will work perfectly. I tried it all. We have a home in Alpharetta, GA and TV. My wife is a teacher and still working – hey, it’s not my idea! We come down to TV for about 10 days every other month (when she’s off), 14 days in December and 6 weeks in the summer. I can’t stand the freezing cold in GA in June and July so we rush to the more comfortable and warmer TV. With regards to the mail, the best so far for me, is to have my mail forwarded from TV to my home in Alpharetta. I’ll do that till we move to TV permanently. I do everything I can on-line through credit card and ETF. When we do come down I put the mail on-hold in Alpharetta. In the summer I do it for 3 weeks and 3 weeks. My neighbor is nice enough to get my mail and to check my mailbox occasionally to see if the PO delivered during the hold period. Unfortunately they almost always deliver a few pieces. I’m not concerned about any of the mail, just the fact that mail sitting in your mailbox may alert an unscrupulous person to the fact that you’re not there. I even got a PO Box at one point but they kept putting junk mail in my mailbox anyway, thus, defeating the purpose. So, do as much as you can on-line, put your mail on-hold and make amends with that neighbor you PO’d in the past and you should be good to go.

I forgot to mention in my points to remember for forwarding mail that even though you submit a forwarding request to the post office, in addition to the junk mail that won't be forwarded, they also do NOT forward certain financial related mail. For instance, some of the income tax statements are not forwarded (learned this the hard way when we first became snow birds). So these must either have the address changed on the company web site or you have to print on your computer. Also, new and reissued credit cards are not forwarded, even though they are mailed in a regular looking envelope. So if you are expecting newly issued credit cards or even new books of checks, you must use the web site to change your mailing address. Also remember, if you use a credit card web site, the new zip code is your address (we have a credit card that always requires me to enter my zip code at the pump when I get gas, and I have to remember which zip code to use).

We were wintering in St. Augustine for a couple of months each of the last 5 winters. I went online with all my bills and forwarded the other stuff. Had no problems until the last 2 years and this year was the worst! Even though the PO had the expire/cutoff date for forwarding mail, they continued to forward mail to FL after we went back to Wisconsin!! I was on the PO in both states trying to straighten things out. I was told by the worker at the PO in FL that "the forwarding system is broken." Great!! For my part, I wouldn't do it again. It was such a hassle this year! I'd either do the hold thing with someone picking up the delivered mail or try to find someone to pick it up for you (offer to pay them a few bucks or give them a gift card for doing it).

Get on the USPS web site. For $1 you can have your mail forwarded to your new address. They do not forward junk mail, or special items like an absentee ballot and some magazines will not get forwarded (I know Discover magazine is one of those). You st the start and end dates or you can turn it off by going back to the website. The $1 is to your credit card as a way for them to verify it is you. Alternatively have a neighbor pick it up.

The post office sucks. I tried with the forwarding thing and it is not worth it. Have a neighbor or house watch person pick up your mail. Pay for all your bills on line.

Been forwarding for years. Don't forget to reverse that coming. Back

I forwarded mail for 21 years and had no problems with it. I found there was about one week delay in getting mail from Florida to Michigan so I would cut off forwarding one week before returning to Florida and have them hold my mail for that week. If my return time changed it was easy to change the dates for forwarding or holding on line with the USPS. I would also set up forwarding for 6 months upon leaving Michigan so any miscellaneous mail from Florida got sent back. I set all this up on-line and it is easy and flawless. I also found the USPS to be responsive to changes and there were no delays in executing them.

First off we travel by RV and are sometimes gone for 2 or 3 months so we do not have another address to forward mail to us on the road. We get a personal mail box(PMB) at the local UPS Store and have our mail forwarded to the PMB. We will call the UPS Store and they will let us know what is in our box and decide whether to have them mail it to us at our campground or to General Delivery in the city we are staying in. Of course there is a fee for all of this but it is the best way for us since we are traveling and not in any one place more than a week. In addition, we have as many of our bills paperless and on autopay as we can. We signed up for USPS Informed Delivery which sends us an email each day with images of mail coming to our mailbox and packages. This all has worked great for us until a credit card company decided to send us the usual privacy notice even though we had paperless billing and notified them we were traveling and the USPS returned the notice to them. The retuned notice prompted the credit card company to freeze our card. We found out when we were in Albuquerque and needed to buy 50 gallons of gas for the RV and the credit card would not work! Luckily we had other card to use until we could call and rectify the situation. So yes, the USPS will not forward financial mail.

Have a neighbor pickup and hold your mail, hopefully all your Bill's are auto pay, so all mail will just just.

We have our mail forwarded

bypass the 'snail mail' as much as you can....'go green' the OP obviously has access to a computer/internet. Receive as many bills online as possible....use your bank's 'bill payer' feature to pay your bills. It makes life simple, because can do it whenever you want to and you don't have to leave your home

We were snowbirds this past year from Illinois and had our mail forwarded and it was a disaster. Many items we never received, or for some reason were just not forwarded. Each post office (Illinois and Lady Lake blamed each other and the system) multiple phone calls were made for assistance always with a promise of a call back from a supervisor which never happened. We do have our bills set up for auto pay so we don’t get much important first class mail, yet it’s tax season. So next time we will be the $20 per week (just add that to our rent money) and be assured we will receive it all.

Forwarding mail
 

We live in NYC and we plan to move to TV probably next year. We would like to rent for 3 months before buying so does anyone know if TV has a general mail box that we could forward our mail to until we get a permanent address? We will of course be effectively of no fixed abode for 3 months as we will sell up in NYC before we move. All advice would be welcome

To Kevenhoi. When we rented homes here in The Villages, we rented a post box for 3 months and that gave us an address to use for forwarding mail. You can rent a box at one of the post offices, but typically they aren't very close to your home. We rented from what was then called Pack & Ship (now called Safe Ship) in the Southern Trace shopping center, and I think most of the shopping centers around The Villages have similar stores (e.g. the UPS store or Safe Ship) that offer this service so they are usually close by your rental home. One of the nice things about using the service from the stores is you get to use the street address of the store so that you can also receive items from UPS and FedEx. As I recall, when we received a bigger items, they left a note in our mail box that they were holding a package for us. Seemed to work really well.

Sire1. Much appreciated, thank you very much for this valuable advice. Looking forward to moving.