Mail for Snowbirds?
March 7, 2019 9:15 AM   Subscribe

My parents are snowbirds, spending half their time in Florida and the other half in Illinois. I have been retrieving their mail from their PO box and UPSing to them, which is an hour roundtrip if I do it on my lunch hour from work- and 2 hours if I drive from my home on a Saturday. However, this alternately makes me feel annoyed and then guilty for being annoyed. There has to be a better way.

They have refused to do mail forwarding, which a former mail-carrier friend had advised them against, due to delays and delivery complications when switching between states. This is mostly for magazine subscriptions, as most bill-paying is done online (thankfully).
posted by sarajane to Home & Garden (21 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
They don't have any friends or neighbors in their hometown they could pay to do that?
posted by erst at 9:24 AM on March 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Er. Tell them you don’t want to waste an hour of your day forwarding magazines! Highly reasonable boundary. What exactly is the world ending event if they forward their magazines and one doesn’t show up? They can tell their ex-mail carrier friend to do it for them. 🙄
posted by stoneandstar at 9:28 AM on March 7, 2019 [22 favorites]


Best answer: Also, they could update their address with the magazines... ? No forwarding required, takes an hour every six months instead of an hour every time you have to do it.
posted by stoneandstar at 9:29 AM on March 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


YOU are putting in work and time so that THEY can be comfortable retirees.

That is unreasonable. You should not feel guilty for not putting up with this.
posted by notsnot at 9:34 AM on March 7, 2019 [15 favorites]


I'm not sure how often you are doing this? I guess I have three suggestions.

1. They should sign up for Informed Delivery from the USPS and only task you to getting their mail if there is something important there. They should handle waiting for their magazines for a few weeks.

2. They should give you pre-paid express mail mailers from the post office that you can ship their stuff in so it's literally just "get mail, dump in envelope, leave envelope where you picked up mail. the end" I'm not sure if there is a reason you are sending their mail UPS?

3. They should treat it like a job and offer you some sort of token payment/appreciation so maybe you go to the town and you have a standing tab at the coffee/lunch/dessert place in that town so you have something to look forward to that isn't just UGH MAIL. Or they get you a gas card, whatever.

I do agree (as someone who has played the mail forwarding game for decades but has handled it on my own) that forwarding back and forth can really be a pain in the ass for magazines. That said, that doesn't mean it should be your job to act as a mail forwarding service. They could look into an actual service that does this, see how much it costs and realize that what you are doing is the same sort of thing. Or maybe find a task rabbit type person in their town?
posted by jessamyn at 9:34 AM on March 7, 2019 [12 favorites]


Best answer: Temporary Change of Address. I don't know what their friend told them, but I've done mail forwarding (both permanent and temporary) a bunch, thanks to multiple interstate moves. It costs $1 each time which is less than you are spending in gas driving back and forth. If there's a delivery delay, it's like a day or so which is not an issue for magazine subscriptions. Hell, my tax forms were mail forwarded this year, and they still arrived a week after the initial postmark.
posted by basalganglia at 9:36 AM on March 7, 2019 [17 favorites]


Digital magazine subscriptions, or gift subscriptions to the public libraries in each locale.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:48 AM on March 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


Best answer: There are multiple USPS forwarding services and mail scanning services, which are nice for tax/bank/official documents etc. Yes, Informed Delivery at the least so you don't waste a trip.

They could also get a second magazine subscription, or just buy their magazines in the store. (Why are parents so annoying?)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:48 AM on March 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Do they have to have a PO box? If they get mail delivery at both addresses they could swap the PO box for a mail scanning service (example). As many people are reporting upthread, changing the magazine addresses regularly with customer service is not a big deal, most magazines allow you to do this from the online account.
posted by veery at 9:50 AM on March 7, 2019


Why not have them forward their mail to your address and then you just send it when it works for you? Temporary forwarding as suggested above.

Magazines can be iffy to forward but IME they *usually* got there. But, if they want them that badly they can do the work and change the address on the magazine account every six months to ensure they get every last one.

Don't feel guilty. Just decide what you will or won't do and be firm about your boundaries.
posted by Armed Only With Hubris at 10:00 AM on March 7, 2019 [8 favorites]


They could move their PO Box to be closer to you.
posted by soelo at 10:17 AM on March 7, 2019 [4 favorites]


Best answer: They can put mail forwarding on their PO Box for a set period of time. I think that the post office will do this for no charge, as long as they're paying for their PO Box. (And if your parents explain that they're snowbirds, they will switch back in six months.) The only thing there is, they have to remember to update the forwarding each time before they head south.

Edit: if they make the change through the website, there will be a charge. If they make the change in person, there may not be a change.
posted by Tailkinker to-Ennien at 10:29 AM on March 7, 2019


I feel like it'd be cheaper to just buy two subscriptions to these magazines, even if they go unused at each address half the year.

I'd make that their holiday gift.
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:31 AM on March 7, 2019 [9 favorites]


When I was college, the local postmaster advised my parents they could manually forward for free by printing the new address on a sticker and affixing it to the original mail so that it did covered the old address, but not the recipient's name (so that it's obviously a forward to the same person, not mailing a second time with used postage). They had to bring it to the counter staff in person, rather than dropping it in the mail slot. It wouldn't solve the time issue, but would be free.
posted by yuwtze at 10:46 AM on March 7, 2019


I do something similar with my dad and stepmom's mail a few months out of the year and was about to type up our process until I noticed you're doing all this work and driving for magazines?! UGH, just no.

Could you spot-check the PO box occasionally for any important or time-oriented stuff (tax documents, invitations, etc.) and forward that as necessary but let the rest pile up in a shopping bag or banker box or whatever? Then they'll have six months worth of magazines to look forward to doling out each time they relocate!

I also like the idea to just get a subscription for each address. Magazines are cheap.
posted by anderjen at 11:01 AM on March 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


Buy them digital subscriptions to their magazines as a gift and then refuse to forward the mail anymore.
posted by nicebookrack at 11:06 AM on March 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


I mean, the better way is that you tell them this will no longer be possible. They'll find a solution. Why is this your problem?
posted by Automocar at 12:18 PM on March 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


if you move their PO box to one closer to where you live, you'll be able to check it more often and notify them sooner if anything important arrives, and they'll still be able to get their mail easily when they are in town whenever you visit each other. it's win-win.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:55 PM on March 7, 2019


Best answer: they seriously just need to log in to the magazine website and change their address like a month before they move each time. this is a huge waste of time and money for you and it baffles me that they are even asking you to do it.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 2:32 PM on March 7, 2019 [3 favorites]


I'm almost old enough to retire and I would not expect my kids to do this for me. An hour a week? Ridiculous. Tell them to pick a PO box near your job or hire someone to handle it. I'm all about helping family if they need it, but this is a problem they created themselves, and I'd say they are free to solve it as they like.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:03 PM on March 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


I would go through the mail every two weeks and sort it into stuff that can wait and stuff to call them about. Bills can paid online, set up with auto-payments. Addresses can be updated for personal mail. Magazines can have the addressed changed. Etc. Alternatively, something like taskrabbit might be available.

(Just to add my other viewpoint and this is less a direct answer to your question than a balancing answer to some of the others, I'd be happy to spend an hour a week doing something for my mom if she was still alive. I know she spent many of her "lunch hours" and free time doing things for me, would come over and babysit my children or make me a meal. I know you were asking about a mail problem not a family problem but many of the comments are just saying that it is not your problem so just don't do it and ... in my experience the definition of family, whether chosen or biological, is that you do things that are not your problem because they are family and they do things for you (maybe that doesn't describe your family). With all that said, there are fixes for the mail issue, but in one sense this may be a gift of your time, if not to do every week, to help and figure a transition to a solution. Your parents may need your help more and more as they age. I am snowbirding myself this week away from my own family to help my aging grandparents and it is more than a disruption to my life and schedule but I can think of many, many times when I've been a disruption to their lives and they were happy to help me. Peace.)
posted by RoadScholar at 5:02 AM on March 8, 2019 [3 favorites]


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