Mail Box at UPS Store

[riverdees05 Platinum Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close riverdees05]

We are moving to Tennessee in July, but have not put our house in Missouri on the market. In fact, we probably won't do that till next Spring since my daughter has one more year of college to finish and it is located in town. So, we'll maintain two residents for 9-12 months. We are thinking about getting a mail box the local UPS store which is only 1 1/2 miles from our new home. Has anyone had experience with them? Our concerns of having the mail delivered to our new home are 1) having to start and stop it a lot and 2) if we don't start and stop having mail in our box for a period of time. We don't want someone to be able to access our bills, offers for credit cards, etc.

[Guest Close Quarterbore]

I would look at the costs and compare it to the USPS for a PO Box.

I had a Box at the UPS Store for a couple years and the big advantage is when you receive a lot of packages and you don't want them sitting at the front door. The cost is MUCH more expensive then a PO Box but I thing the UPS box may have an advantage in that they may be willing to ship you all of your mail on a periodic basis if you can't get your mail. Another pluss with the UPS box is the extended hours.

I now use a PO box and I personally like the PO Box just as much although the Post Office hours sure can make it a bugger to get my mail! Given the price is about 1/3 as much I just get my mail once a week (On weekends).

[Fern Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fern]

I've had a UPS Store mail address for three years. It's my legal address for most everything. Even Nevada DMV and the tax collector accept it as my mailing address. Its the address on my driver's license and vehicle registration, too. So if any valet ever copies my house key, he'll try to open the UPS Store with it

The UPS Store is open six days a week 8AM to 6PM, and for a small deposit I got a key and can get in during off hours to access my mail. They accept all packages for me...UPS, US Mail, Fed-Ex, Airbourne, etc. I don't ever have to be home to receive anything. That alone is worth it to me. Also, when I am on vacation they bundle the mail for me and hold it, and they never forget and keep delivering. If I were going to be away for a while, for a fee (just the postage) they are willing batch forward my mail.

Fern

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

Fern, we have all these features at our local post office too. They receive packages also. We have a pretty large box because we receive so many magazines but it is not half as expensive as a private mail box. I am surprised that not all post offices have this feature yet of receiving packages today. They will hold it for us for 14 days, I believe so if you are gone for more than two weeks, it may be a problem.

All our papers too have the post office address rather than our home address in case you lose your purse, keys, license or credit card. It may be a false sense of security but it feels good. I did lose my purse once and didn't have to change locks but had to take care of my license, credit card number and cell phone account. It was still a hassle.

[Icarus Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Icarus]

Emmy,

Are you saying the your US post office accepts packages from UPS, FedEx, etc for you? I didn't think that was possible. You can't even use a PO Box to send FedEx. Though, if you use a private PO box company, like the UPS store, they can and do accept almost anything.

My post office automatically holds all packages that won't fit into my mailbox too. It's not a feature I want, but even though UPS, FedEx, and every other private delivery company doesn't have a problem with my long driveway, the USPS does and anytime there's a package that won't fit, they leave a pink slip instead.

When we got here, the little door on the rural style mailbox was broken. I took some tools down to see if I could remove mine and replace it with a new mailbox, since they aren't really that expensive, but I realized I'd have to deconstruct the entire wooden support posts because there are three mailboxes on it, and the screws that hold mine to the horizontal post are not accessible.

At the end of the day, I had to buy a cordless dremmel tool and cut a small screw that had rusted out and replace it with a new nut and screw so it would hold the front door on it.

I got a couple of notices from the post office complaining about my "non-compliant" mailbox while I was procrastinating about what to do about it. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the regular mail lady that left those official nasty-grams for me, since I explained to her that I had to get the dremmel tool to fix it, after I showed her I couldn't easily replace the entire thing.

-David

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

David, you are right. They are packages that are sent by post office only. We receive several like that each month, especially books. It will not work with FedEx or UPS parcels. They are delivered to our home. I didn't think of those. When we are planning to be away, we do not order stuff that has to be sent by UPS or FedEx.

At our post office, we have a rack of large boxes standing where the post office boxes are too so you can go there after hours too. When you have a parcel, they put a key in your post office box so you can open that other box where the parcel is. After removing the parcel, you leave the key in the lock of that box. It has worked well for many years already. I hope it stays that way.

[Fern Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fern]

Emmy, as David said, we get packages from several sources, so the post office doesn't work for us. And if we just had a street address, that wouldn't work either cause our delivery time is very erratic, and we get prescription meds via mail (and sometimes UPS). I'd hate to miss the mail delivery and have our meds sitting outside all night in 100 degree weather.

Fern

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

Fern, the post office definitely would not work for you with the hot temperatures outside and certainly not for medications sitting baking in the sun.

I didn't even know that a UPS Store has boxes too. We used Mail Boxes, Etc. for a while but found it too expensive but the service was good but we like the convenience of our post office in Seal Beach because it is so close and we drive by there almost every day. We have a FedEx office close to us too but not UPS. They are far away so we never go there.

[Icarus Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Icarus]

Mail Boxes, etc is the same thing as the UPS Store. UPS purchased the franchise company a couple of years ago, around the same time that FedEx bought Kinkos.

The Makawao post office kindly held two more packages for us today and left a nice little pink slip in our mail box.

-David

[riverdees05 Platinum Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close riverdees05]

We are going to check at the end of the week with the USPS Post Office and see what they charge. The pricing we were getting from the UPS Store seemed very reasonable. The UPS store is 1 mile away and the USPS Post Office is 3 1/2 miles away.