Years ago, putting a hold on your mail delivery was easy. All you had to do was tell your friendly U.S. Postal Service mail carrier that you’d be away and ask if they could hold the mail until you returned next Monday. Problem solved. We left a cardboard box under our mailbox inside our screened-in porch, since our mail carrier walked his route, door to door.
Things aren’t that simple anymore. We hardly see our mail carrier because the mailbox is located five houses away from us and is for twenty houses on our street.
In addition, not only do you need to alert the Post Office but what about those packages you’re expecting from UPS or FedEx? Plus, hello, all those Amazon deliveries?
Here’s a guide to walk you through how to hold or redirect deliveries when you’re out of town.
First, I want to mention that making a free account with all delivery services (USPS, UPS and FedEx) is straightforward. Doing so will make the management of your deliveries much easier.
US Postal Service
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS or just the Post Office) makes it easy to put a hold on your mail deliveries while you’re away. I do this for any trip where we’ll be away for more than a long weekend.
The Post Office does require you to create a USPS.com account and verify your identity to put a hold on your mail. Information about the requirements can be found on this page of their website.
Once all of the prep work is done, you only need to enter the dates you want your mail held and whether you’ll pick up the mail from the post office or if they should deliver it as one large clump when you return. Imagine the stack of mail waiting when we returned from 3 weeks in Australia and Japan!
This hold will work for your regular mail, including junk mail, and any USPS-delivered packages received while you are away.
But not everything is delivered by the post office, and you don’t always know which delivery service you’ll receive a package from while you’re away. Why not sign up for the other services?
United Parcel Service (UPS)
If you receive packages shipped through UPS, you should sign up for UPS My Choice.
While UPS originally made this service user-friendly, they’ve since changed to a subscription model. I’ve upgraded to the Premium membership, which includes delivering packages on a different day, to a different address, or to a UPS Store, and currently costs $19.99 per year.
There’s also a “Pay per use” model, which I used to get a package rerouted when it was due to be delivered while we were away. First, the package was delayed, and then they told me I couldn’t reroute the shipment even though they offered the service to me for an additional charge.
Federal Express (FedEx)
To use any FedEx shipping options, you’ll need to sign up for a free FedEx account. Once you’ve done that, you can log into the FedEx Delivery Manager website.
You can log into the website and request your deliveries be suspended until you return. But what if you forgot to sign up before the package was delivered?
You can send a package to a different location or set to pick it up at a FedEx store or other pick-up point, but not all of these options are free, so it pays to just hold your packages before you leave.
Amazon
The one mind-boggling thing about shipments from Amazon.com is you’re never really sure who will deliver your package. Will it come via USPS or UPS? Or will some random dude drive to your house and leave a box by your garage? (apparently, that’s a valid delivery method in Florida)
While Amazon doesn’t allow you to hold or redirect packages once they’re shipped, there is one “alternative shipping” option available if you need to order something while you’re out of town. Amazon Counters & Lockers.
Final Thoughts
We knew we might be getting a package delivered while away but didn’t know which delivery service would be shipping the item. I put a hold on our deliveries with all three services (we didn’t order anything from Amazon while we were away).
It might take a few minutes to set up each account, but once you do that, putting a hold on your mail while you’re out of town might be just as easy as it used to be when all you needed to do was tell your mail carrier.
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