[Shel&Rich]

We will be arriving next week to spend our first FL winter in Sanibel. For now we will be snowflakes and have our mail forwarded to us from the post office. There are no options from the post office. They forward every week at a cost of $15 a week. We were wondering what other options were available for long term (6mo.) forwarding service?

[Bill-n-Brillo]

Google "mail forwarding service" (without the quotes) - lots of different options to investigate.

What you mentioned is called "Premium Forwarding Service" by the USPS. There is an option to do a temporary change of address but I believe they only forward 1st class mail. You'd have to do a change of address directly with your magazine publishers, etc.

If you're having a neighbor look in on your place periodically while you're gone, perhaps they'd be willing to bundle up your mail weekly and mail it out in a Priority Mail box/envelope......which I believe is really all the post office is doing with their Premium Forwarding Service.

Bill

[Zoomie1955]

Originally Posted by Shel&Rich

We will be arriving next week to spend our first FL winter in Sanibel. For now we will be snowflakes and have our mail forwarded to us from the post office. There are no options from the post office. They forward every week at a cost of $15 a week. We were wondering what other options were available for long term (6mo.) forwarding service?

You could put in a temporary COA (change of address) Good for six months and it would cost you nothing. The post office will forward your first class mail but magazines will only be forwarded for three months. The premium service, ($15 a week) they will forward ALL your mail. It's up to you.
You can do it online for $1.

[njbchbum]

we snowbird for three mos and process a change of address for that time - i do it on line for $1. it's convenient because we don't have any magazine subscriptions to fret about...and after christmas...i don't need to see another catalog!

however...there always seems to be some mail in the "pipeline" that gets caught somewhere and is not forwarded. so, what i have done is ask my mailman that if i have my mail held for 2 weeks in nj [after our departure] - would he be so kind as to forward that mail in a pre-paid priority envelope approx 2 wks after we depart. he is a dear, so he says yes. he also has been known to hang onto a couple of catalogs that my husband gets and then mail them down once a month. when/if he does that, we give him a happy birthday card when we return - even tho we don't know when his birthday is!

so if you have magazines and/or catalogs that you can live without, perhaps the temp change of address will work for you.