Does your mail follow you?
Every year our “seasonal residents” and “snowbirds” have problems getting their mail to follow them as they change locations. There are right ways and wrong ways to accomplish a change of address.
The Fort Myers/Cape Coral Consumer Advisory Council for the U.S. Postal Service is offering two free seminars to assist our northern friends in making sure they get their mail.
– Tuesday, Feb. 22, South County Regional Library, 21100 Three Oaks Pkwy, Estero, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.
– Friday, Feb. 25, Cape Coral Public Library, 921 SW 39th Terrace, Cape Coral, 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Attendees will have the opportunity to ask specific questions about their mail service.
Forwarding mail is a big expense for the Postal Service and having mail addressed correctly the first time is as important to the Postal Service as it is to the customer. It’s important for everyone to notify their correspondents directly when they are going to be relocating, preferably 30 days in advance. And it can all be done on your computer through usps.com or by calling 1-800-ASK-USPS.
Every Post Office maintains its own data base, so filing a change of address with one Post Office does not alert the other Post Office of the change. Did you cancel your northern address before heading to Florida? You should have completed a forwarding change from there so they know to forward your mail. And, you should notify mail carriers at both your northern and Florida address of your location.
Snowbirds need to choose which address will be their permanent residence-north or south-and when they leave the permanent address, they have to file a “temporary” change of address for their temporary residence. Temporary changes are for six months only; however a second temporary change can extend it beyond the six month period. After two temporary changes, a waiting period of 45 days is required before another address change may be requested.
It should be noted that only First-Class Mail is forwarded for the six-month period; magazines are only forwarded for 60 days, so publishers should be notified of your relocation.
Premium Forwarding Service is available for $14.75 per week; this forwards all mail, including magazines and advertising, once a week with Priority Mail.
A Mover’s Guide is available at post offices if you don’t want to use the computer for facilitating your address changes.
For more information about purchasing stamps, stamps by mail, postal regulations, a free subscription to USA Philatelic magazine, Post Office events, the location of the nearest postal store or contract unit, or for answers to your specific Postal Service questions, contact USPS at 1-800-275-8777, or visit www.usps.com. To schedule a presentation for your community, club or group on how the Postal Service brings the Post Office to your home or office computer, call 573-9638.
Mr. Zip’s Tip: According to the USPS Household Diary Study, households in the U.S. received 131.6 billion pieces of mail in fiscal year 2009. American households sent 18.8 billion pieces of mail. Mail sent or received by households constituted 82 percent of total domestic mail that year
A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $67 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 29th in the 2010 Fortune 500. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency six consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.