Mail Hold or Forwarding Services

Anybody had their mail held in U.S. for 3+ months when traveling? Hoping for some FT advice since I'm sure someone has done this and has either success or horror stories to tell.

Friends from San Francisco will be spending summer in Europe but this year cannot forward mail to other family members nor are their neighbors or friends available to gather mail on a regular basis.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I assume USPS rental boxes would not hold 3-months worth of mail, and USPS Mail Hold service is out as it has max limit of 30 days. Have tried some local Postal Connection companies, and they are not offering such a service.

Some online sites offer a variety of these services--a few even include scanning addressed side of mail pieces with ability of traveler to have certain pieces forwarded to them. These are ones I noticed:

USAbox
Bongo Intl
Earth Class

Does anyone have experience with these? Any others? Or have any ideas on how better to handle this? This is one more planning headache they could do without. Thanks to all.

Have you tried the US Post Office?

You can do this online (usps.gov) - Priority forwarding service. (hold maxes at 30 days).

For some reason this sort of thread often finds its way into the Travel Technology forum. There are a couple threads there that may be of use to the OP:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...orwarding.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...-services.html

Hope that helps!

As I queried "Anybody had their mail held in U.S. for 3+ months when traveling?" So USPS won't work.

Thanks, sbm12, I'll check those threads for more info. I also saw Earth Class mentioned on Tim Ferris' blog and in his comments, so have a few recommendations for that one.

The Mail Forwarding thread was exactly what I wanted. Again, thank you for the referral to that. I thought I had exhausted all ways of searching on this site for this topic, but I must not have. Appreciate your posting.

thanks a lot for this!

Mail forwarding can be a pain sometimes..

If you talk in person to your local post office supervisor, they will hold mail for longer than 30 days. They held mine for 2 months last summer in Ann Arbor.

They will also forward for longer - they send your mail via priority mail. This does cost money, but I believe it costs less than using a third-party... and if they're going to lose mail at the post office it wouldn't get to the third party anyway.

I'll recommend friends give that direct approach a try. I know they did that without prior permission in a way a few years ago by having a friend with an authorized letter pick up mail after one month and put it back on hold again with their signed form. The USPS didn't like it (and let them know in no uncertain terms when they returned finally to pick up last month of mail), but at least they still held mail instead of dumping it or overloading the mailbox.

Think my folks have also played dumb once and just submitted online form using 3-month absence but, again, got dressed down by USPS upon return. Guess USPS did hold mail, so if one doesn't mind the "talking-to" upon return it might be worth trying it again if a direct inquiry with postal supervisor or postmaster doesn't work.

Well, friends don't really want mail forwarded to their European address unless something urgent and unexpected arrived; just want mail held. They plan to put all bills to "paperless statements" where possible, suspend subscriptions, etc. So should not receive anything urgent needing to be forwarded to Europe. Just mentioned "Mail Forwarding" in OP since find that those companies offering that include the mail holding service, and finding few online discussions (just like here) of just the "Hold Mail" issue.

I was hoping some local Mail Boxes Etc, Postal Connection or the like would offer to hold mail for several months, but finding none do locally. Thanks for everyone's advice all the same.

I haven't researched this for a while but when I did, I found that mail forwarding services were active for folks who boat, and that businesses like that could be found near active boating areas. You might check that out.

Just an update...have chosen Earth Class Mail because expect low amount of mail and will need little to none forwarded. Found discount codes online which gave first month free plus credit of $25 activation fee (code used RV-GLOBAL). In this case, saved $38.95 on 6-month service. Similar discount supposedly for code LIFESTYLE.

Hope this helps someone else.