mail delivery

[bill j]

One obstacle to being on the boat for extended lengths of time is how to periodically check the mail. We have as many routine monthly bills with automatic drafts but there is always something that needs attention. Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated. Thanks - Bill

 

[Bruce Moore]

We have changed many of our accounts to electronic billing. Especially those with variable amounts due.

Cheers,

Bruce

 

[Nva]

Don’t know if you have done this yet but you can sign up on line to have the post office scan your mail so you can see what will be delivered each day.

 

[Cutwater28GG]

https://sailmail.com/

https://www.sbimailservice.com/

 

[NorthernFocus]

What do you consider "extended lengths of time"? More than a month at a time? With or without on-line access?

In addition to boating we travel internationally twice a year for upward of a month and spend three months each winter "snow birding". A big part of it is learning to make sure that there's not "always something that needs attention". Planning ahead, using electronic transactions as much as possible(e.g.paperless billing/automatic billpay), and finally recalibrating our own minds such that unexpected things just have to wait. There is a difference in wanting to take care of things timely and things having to be taken care of timely.

We did have one of our utility companies which wasn't set up to do automated bill pay. In that case we simply made sure we maintained a net positive balance on our account that was large enough to cover 3x our largest historic monthly bill. There are workarounds for most anything.

 

[NorthernFocus]

https://sailmail.com/

https://www.sbimailservice.com/

You can also simply get a mailbox at a UPS store and have your mail forwarded on-demand. They will cull the junk mail. But you do have to have an address for it to be sent to.

 

[knotflying]

We travel quite a bit between Rhode Island, Florida and our boat. Mail was always catching up. We have used St. Brenden's Isle https://www.sbimailservice.com for 7 years and it is great. All of our envelopes get scanned and we get a notice when we have mail. You can usually tell what is in the envelope. If it is important you can then click to have the contents scanned. You can then print it out if you want and then have them shred it. Other mail not time critical you can have held and then shipped to you wherever you are. We usually get a shipment every 3 weeks or so. We have a majority of bills e-mailed or paid automatically so mail is usually minimal. The best part is no more junk mail! They throw all that away. We use the St. Brendan's address for everything, licenses, vehicle registrations, tax returns etc. In other words that is our legal address.
Very easy to sign up and in 7 years never an issue.

 

[trailertrawlerkismet]

I second Mike RIZZO’s comments. We’ve used St Brennan’s SBI for about 7 years and find it very user friendly. You can turn it on, like we just did for 2 months, then turn it off until your next trip. To do a temporary address change with the post office I simply go online and fill the form out for when to start, stop and where the mail is to be sent. For my money there is no better choice.

Jim

 

[walldog]

We used these folks at Shilshoe for several years. They open our mail, scan it and put the files in Dropbox. It worked so well for us that we had most all mail go directly to them year around. They work much better than the PO. https://www.docksidemail.com/ . Tell Angela or Lisa that Herb and Willie sent you.