I've been using Earth Class Mail for two years and I love it. You can make your address the warehouse in Beaverton, OR, or a few other places.

Earth Class mail website has a bunch of information about their security procedures.

EarthClassMail
 

ECM is great in theory, but one thing they don’t tell you up front is that it costs out the nose (at least $10 per shipment in my case, and I live in a major U.S. city) to have a piece of your mail physically delivered to you, even if it’s a single envelope! They refuse to use the USPS to forward mail, insisting on using only couriers that provide item tracking. Thus, you have to pay DHL, UPS, or FedEx rates to physically get your mail.

ECM is clearly targeting customers who receive lots of mail per week and can take advantage of bulk shipments or customers who can get away with reading their mail online and rarely or never need to physically receive it. In my case, I need to physically receive a handful of letters per month (legal documents, for instance), so unless I’m willing to wait until the end of the month to get these (which is difficult, since some of them are timely), I have to pay as much as $50/month extra to physically receive my critical mail. Other services like US Global Mail forward through USPS for as little as $2-3/item. ECM needs to at least offer this as an option.

I didn’t find out about this limitation until I received my first critical piece of mail. I was forced to pay $10 to ship that piece of mail, but thereafter, I immediately asked ECM to cancel my account … which they promptly did, but they neglected to tell me until the account was actually canceled that they would not be refunding any of the months I had already paid in advance.

Buyer beware.
:td:

Consider Taxes and Shipping Methods
 

Considering taxes and shipping methods http://www.usglobalmail.com
is the best.

There are no State Taxes in texas so you will save on the average 11% on any USA purchases.

They will also ship using USPS which is why they need a signed copy of your passsport and DL and health card or whatever. That is a USPS requirement to prevent mail fraud.

There is no better or cheaper carrier than USPS. I have packages sent to the middle east first class mail, priority mail, global express mail and never had a problem. USPS is 1/3 the cost of Fedex, UPS or DHL etc...

I only use Fedex when a parcel is too large for USPS.

Considering the savings in sales tax and using USPS this is the best bang for your buck!

^

Nice review Alect! very inclusive, but you actually missed one, I've been looking for the same kind of services for a while, and even signed up for a couple, but the monthly fees and the cost didn't make it worth my while, until I found www.shipito.com, they offer all what the other guys ( my us, accesusa...) offer and more, Real US address, repackaging, mail..., and they actually don't charge monthly or set up fees... I know! I found it hard to believe too, but they're great, I've been using them for a year and I can't complain, and I love that they have an actual person on the phone to answer questions when you need to, I hate talking to automated computers, anyways you should add them to your review to make it complete.

I like usamail1
 

I haven't used all these other services so I can't say good or bad about them, but I've been very happy with usamail1.com - great prices, excellent service. And I save money with their consolidation service, because I'm always ordering small packages. With consolidation I don't have to pay to forward each and every one separately, and they don't charge too much for the service.

Any updates on your experiences with these services?

Heard mention of Earth Class (formerly "Remote Control Mail") on Tim Ferris' blog back in June 2007 and several commenting there recommended it too. But wondering about current experiences from long-time FTers.

Friends will need 3+ months of mail only to be held with no forwarding of packages. So no concerns about price of shipping except for the entire package of held mail at the end of the travel time back to local U.S. home.

In this case, it seems like NH would be the best bet, as they do not have any state income tax or sales tax. Right?

Wirelessly posted (Blackberry8700c: BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.266 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/120)

I've been using ECM the past year and it has been fine. Good service but awful website frankly. They just this week launched a new website beta that seems very much improved so that's a big win. They do USPS shipping but per item rather than consolidating. Seeing as I only need something mailed maybe every other month this still works fine for me.

Just an update on Earth Class Mail. Found different discount coupon codes online for them which has given first month free plus $25 activation fee credit to the draw-down account. Used code: RV-GLOBAL successfully, and heard that code: LIFESTYLE gives the same discount.

Hope this helps someone.

Earthclass Mail has upped their prices signficantly to the point I don't think I can recommend them anymore. Their most discount plan is $20/month and each scan costs $1.50. That's just too high for my mostly casual use.

On the plus side, they've added Swiss and German addresses, which is useful for things inside the EU

I was surprised today when logging into my BongoUS account (of 2 years standing) to see a new user interface ^ but also a hike in scanning fees to $2 per scan. I was not notified of this.

When I queried it they said they would refund the difference to me for scans for the rest of the month as an apology for lack of communication of changes.

But to go from 50c to $2 per scan is outrageous - I will be closing my BongoUS account as it makes it financially unviable to continue.

Hello all,

First time poster here... I found this site when I was looking for mail forwarding service reviews last winter while we were in the initial planning stages of our move from the US to the Caribbean. Thank you for all the reviews and information - AlecT's earlier summary was extremely helpful to us.

We finally moved about a month ago and feel like we can give back to this forum by reporting our own experiences with mail forwarding.

Initially we decided to go with BongoUS for the same reasons that AlecT had quoted earlier. However, after we went through some of the initial steps with them in August they asked us for our marriage certificate and told us that unless we provided them with a marriage certificate my husband and I would not be able to share the same mailbox (I did not change my last name, so we have 2 different last names) and we would have to purchase separate accounts?!!?!?! This was unsettling - they already have copies of our documents and too much personal information about us as it is, why do they want our marriage certificate? As my husband joked, "next they'll ask for our blood types!" We called several of the other services - Earth Class Mail, USAMail1, etc. and nobody else seemed to have any such rule. The only reasonable explanation we can think of is that BongoUS wanted to get twice the money from us by having us sign up for 2 accounts.

We signed up with USAMail1 instead. Their customer service department seems nice enough, although they do lack in communication skills sometimes and it took them 3 weeks to get our account up and running. We have started getting mail in our USAMail1 account and so far things seem to be going well (1 week! fingers crossed). I will come back and give a thorough review once we've had a little more experience with them.

If anyone has any other suggestions/experiences/warning please keep posting - your reviews are very helpful!

Anna

Thanks Anna. That is weird about the marriage certificate - my wife and I have different names and we were fine - we just filled in their form and had it notarize and both of our names are on the account.

I am actually going to be closing my account with Bongo - they raised scanning prices from 50c to $2 (and didn't notify me). That makes it financially unsustainable for us. We're going to have my MIL be our mail forwarding service :)

USAMail1.com
 

Thank you for the very detailed analysis of services.

I'm considering using usamail1 that you listed above. I like that they also ship with the US Postal Service, which will save me on customs. From a quick search on the Internet they seem to be a reputable company.

Lisa