We have been live-a-boards for about 2 1/2 years. We are now Inside Passage veterans (sort of) and common sense plays a lot here too. the two CC is a great idea and we practiced it last summer. It seems the small stupid things get you. i.e. When we forwarded our mail to a mail service. Our absentee voting ballots were sent back as they could not be forwarded. The USPS will only forward your Yachting magazines for 60 only days.
Forwarding isn't a great solution except for a very short period of time. One really needs to change the address if it's a permanent situation, but that includes mail forwarding too and is still problematic. There are many other items that the PO won't forward. I don't believe they'll forward from social security. Banks often say "Return Service Requested" and the PO won't forward items like that. Credit cards are almost always sent in envelopes saying that.
Changing and forwarding isn't simple either. If you're returning to the old address then changing the address doesn't work well, because they will not forward from a mail service. So if you change to ABC Mail Service at 100 Main Street and you're in box 123, that's the end of the path. You can never get mail forwarded out of that location. The post office considers that to be a single address for all the people there.
A couple of other comments on mail forwarding. Post offices are notoriously slow doing it. I've seen it delayed for two weeks or more so for time sensitive mail can be a problem. And, then, when you decide to stop forwarding, depend on some still being forwarded.
So, if you change your address to a mail service, how do you ever return to a home? With difficulty. What most people do is they look at the scans of all mail received to develop a notification list and then keep the box open at the mail service a while.
Oh, the post office is now in the premium mail forwarding business. For a fee they will now collect all your mail and forward it to you in a priority mail envelope weekly. How that benefits you, I have no idea.
St. Brendan's address reads 411 Walnut Street #xxxxx. To the post office it only reads 411 Walnut Street. And when you sign the form for a mail service you agree to the following:
In consideration of delivery of my or our (firm) mail to the agent named below, the addressee and agent agree: (1) the addressee or the agent must not file a change of address order with the Postal Service™ upon termination of the agency relationship; (2) the transfer of mail to another address is the responsibility of the addressee and the agent; (3) all mail delivered to the agency under this authorization must be prepaid with new postage when redeposited in the mails; (4) upon request the agent must provide to the Postal Service all addresses to which the agency transfers mail; and (5) when any information required on this form changes or becomes obsolete, the addressee(s) must file a revised application with the Commercial Mail Receiving Agency (CMRA).
I guess all we know now is it's not as simple as we sometimes make it out to be. When we moved, we got a credit card cancelled because six months later they sent it to our old address, even though out bank accounts had been changed for six months and all accounts with the banks had been in theory, just not in practice. It gets worse. I call. It's my fault, I didn't give the bank my change of address. I need to go to the bank. They tell me they changed my address. I make them pull up the screen with all my accounts and then make them scroll and then put my finger on the screen where they didn't change the card.
