USPS - PO Boxes

The guidelines say no military bases or PO Boxes. Has anyone sent a package to either of these and had the shop approved?

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If the guidelines say not to do it - probably shouldn't do it and you probably won't find anyone on this board that has purposefully not followed the instructions and wanted to get paid.

My "shipping buddies" use my street address. Ends up at my P O Box, but the address on the package is 100% my street address.

I would not DARE send a package to a P O Box. The guidelines are very, very clear about it.

(Edited to add: some people don't realize that street delivery of mail is not an available option out here in the boonies! We all get free P O Boxes, and MUST pick up our mail there.)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2020 04:46PM by ceasesmith.

I never understood why this guideline even matters. The shop is all about what happens at the post office where the mailing process starts, not where it's delivered(as long as it's not zone 0). Every question on the report would be still be applicable if the destination were a p.o. box.

My dad's place out in the boonies just got an actual address this year, before that it was Rout X Box XYZ. The post office would usually not deliver mail out to him, recommending the PO box they had for him in town. Nice to read it isn't just his community with the odd quirk.

@ceasesmith wrote:

My "shipping buddies" use my street address. Ends up at my P O Box, but the address on the package is 100% my street address.

(Edited to add: some people don't realize that street delivery of mail is not an available option out here in the boonies! We all get free P O Boxes, and MUST pick up our mail there.)

My community is the same. It has never made sense to me that we can't mail to P.O. boxes for the shops. It's the only way I have to get my mail, including packages.

@wwin wrote:

My dad's place out in the boonies just got an actual address this year, before that it was Rout X Box XYZ. The post office would usually not deliver mail out to him, recommending the PO box they had for him in town. Nice to read it isn't just his community with the odd quirk.

@ceasesmith wrote:

My "shipping buddies" use my street address. Ends up at my P O Box, but the address on the package is 100% my street address.

(Edited to add: some people don't realize that street delivery of mail is not an available option out here in the boonies! We all get free P O Boxes, and MUST pick up our mail there.)

Happily shopping the Pacific Northwest. Shopping since 2013

@a-scho wrote:

I never understood why this guideline even matters. The shop is all about what happens at the post office where the mailing process starts, not where it's delivered(as long as it's not zone 0). Every question on the report would be still be applicable if the destination were a p.o. box.

I agree and would like the option of using a PO Box once in a while also. I have to believe that part of the data that the MSC collects for the client is delivery times, on-time rate, mis-routed rate, late arrivals, etc. This would be a small sampling, but could be useful to the client. One thing I have noticed is that none of my shops get "approved" until the package is delivered...perhaps this is a coincidence, or maybe it is the tracking data collection aspect. Then again, maybe they don't do any of this data point collection at all...

"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl -- year after year..."

I mailed a package on the 2nd with expected delivery on the 6th. Not only had the report been accepted, but I had already received payment for the shop before the package was actually delivered on the 12th.

PO Box renters may want to check this out. The post offices in my area will provide a physical address with a PO Box.

In my big city many of the PO boxes have a street address and suite number rather than a PO Box address. This is so people can artificially appear to be upwardly mobile, successful entrepreneurs or even try to get their kids into a better school district with an address in Beverly Hills or some other swanky area. I have no idea if the msc can distinguish these two. I have seen "suite" numbers with a different zip code from houses in the area.
When I was growing up we had a route number and box number as our mailing address but the "box" was our mailbox on the road, not a post office box.

I did mail a box in an Amazon box and had it approved. It was for a friend and it only occurred to me that it had markings after I did the shop.

Do not read so much, look about you and think of what you see there.
Richard Feynman-- letter to Ashok Arora, 4 January 1967, published in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (2005) p. 230

Most of my pics are only of the top of the box but if there were some issue with the report and they subsequently traced a box and saw a photo where it did not meet the guidelines that could be a big issue. I could see a shopper getting away with incorrect boxes or addresses for a while though. I am not advocating for doing the job incorrectly.

I confess: I was approved once for a shop that was 14 ounces. But since then i have always weighed the boxes to make sure they were at least a pound and a half.

@Susan L. wrote:

I confess: I was approved once for a shop that was 14 ounces. But since then i have always weighed the boxes to make sure they were at least a pound and a half.

Same.

The only shop I had “held for pay” was one of those micro shops where the post office was in mall and while the website said it was open, it was not. Shop was rejected and no one from the MSC has returned numerous emails. I’m would probably never shop for this company again if it weren’t for the ridiculously easy shops and “fast” pay. I also use it to ship my eBay packages (I offer free shipping) and then conduct a shop where I get reimbursed.

Oh well. The guidelines say we can cover the address with the exception of the zip code...

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