Sending a parcel/package internationally to a pick-up point in USA

May 21, 2024 4:22 PM

I want to send a small parcel from the EU to someone in a small city in CA. I want the recipient to collect it from a post office, pick-up point, locker etc. rather than having it delivered to their home address. The recipient does not have a PO Box. Is this possible?

I looked at General Delivery to a post office but it's not clear it would work for an international parcel/package. Anyone with experience of that?

UPS Access Points would work well, but I don't know how I can send to them from another country. I can see a page like this one for the city I'm trying to send to, but I can't believe it's as simple as sending a parcel to the address given there - or is it?

There may be another option I haven't found yet - any ideas that meet my needs welcome!

I am in no hurry and the items to be sent are not valuable or heavy.

posted by Busy Old Fool to Grab Bag (16 answers total)

What are the contents of the parcel? I suspect the potential for customs duty is the sticking point more than anything, regardless of the route you take. If it's something that pretty clearly won't be subject to duty, I'd send your recipient down to their post office to ask about the General Delivery option.

Assuming your recipient has an address and you're concerned about the package being lost, the other option would be to see if you can require a signature for delivery without costing an arm and a leg. (When I lived in Minneapolis, international packages tended to get held at the post office, but there was no pattern to it that I can recall--aside from one express mail signature required letter, everything I had to go collect came from overseas, but I also remember a package from Book Depository that made it to the landlord's office.)
posted by hoyland at 4:48 PM on May 21

Response by poster: Thanks.

What are the contents of the parcel? I suspect the potential for customs duty is the sticking point more than anything

The contents of the parcel will be plastic, fabric and paper of no commercial value. I have no reason to think there will be any duty.

I'd send your recipient down to their post office to ask about the General Delivery option

The recipient cannot easily do that which is why I'm looking for an answer here.

Assuming your recipient has an address and you're concerned about the package being lost

That is not the concern. I don't want to distract from the question with a long explanation of the background but I'm specifically looking for a way to send parcels internationally to a pickup point in the USA.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 5:09 PM on May 21

With Fedex, you can request the package to be held at nearest "depot". However, this depot may not always be convenient to access. I imagine all major courier service (UPS, DHL, etc.) can do the same.
posted by kschang at 5:11 PM on May 21 [1 favorite]

I'd send your recipient down to their post office to ask about the General Delivery option

The recipient cannot easily do that which is why I'm looking for an answer here.

If you cannot call the post office to find out (or call the USPS general phone number and raise a human), and this is worth spending some money on it, you could consider booking a service on Taskrabbit to have someone physically walk into the post office, find out for you, and report back.
posted by joyceanmachine at 6:00 PM on May 21

There is a bit about general delivery if you search for it on this page, thought I'm not sure how current the info is https://wikitravel.org/en/United_States_of_America

Here's a more in depth explanation. https://escapees.com/usps-general-delivery/

I'd send your recipient down to their post office to ask about the General Delivery option

The recipient cannot easily do that which is why I'm looking for an answer here.

So, if you have read the above links you will have noticed that there is a common theme that it is not consistent how general delivery works in different places, there are different policies, hours, even whether a given post office really has it. So you aren't going to get an answer here that is the one answer that applies to every post office in the US.

You, or the recipient can call the post office if they aren't able to go there and ask in person.

Also, note that general delivery is just for USPS stuff.

UPS, I don't know much about the access points, I think they might be more of something that the recipient has to set up for the sort of shipment you are describing, and it might affect ALL UPS packages that are sent to their address, but I think you can turn it on and off. I would suggest you call a location of "The UPS store" closest to the person and explain the situation. Calling midmoring is probably the best time to find someone with time to explain the system. Lots of actual UPS stores are going to be more helpful than an access point, because they are directly run by UPS and that's their main business.

Also to send something UPS, I think you would need to have UPS in your country or a shipper that works with them. Definitely don't send something to a UPS access point via the postal mail in your country! And no, you can't just send it with just the person's name to the address listed on the website -- that address is so people can find the physical location of the place.

Note that for any of these options the recipient can expect to be required to show a valid photo ID. (usually a non-expired drivers license, state ID, or passport)
posted by yohko at 6:25 PM on May 21 [1 favorite]

How crucial is it that the package is held for pickup and how much are you willing to pay to avoid a small risk that it is delivered instead? How willing are you to risk that the package is lost? Is it in a rural area or small town where the recipient is likely to be known to the postal workers, so might be delivered even without an address, or an urban area?

If you risk tolerance is reasonable, I'd just send it in the post to your recipient's name, General Delivery, their town and label the package hold for pickup. In larger cities with more than one post office, I think USPS will sometimes only allow general delivery at one post office, so you'll want to try to find out which one that is so you can add the right zip code.

If your risk tolerance is low and you are more willing to spend money, I'd say send it with a courier service that will allow you to specify hold for pickup, which I think the major ones (UPS, Fedex, etc) should.

Either way, I think the key phrase you want here is "hold for pickup".
posted by ssg at 6:25 PM on May 21

I guess I'm a little unclear on what the exact difficulty is here, so it's hard to know quite how to advise you. The recipient is unable to pick up the phone and call their local post office to inquire about package reception? The recipient can go to a physical site like a post office once, but only once? The recipient is incapable of doing anything that might create an electronic trail like renting a P.O. box? The recipient mustn't know the package is coming in advance, so they can't be involved in advance planning at all? I'm not trying to be obnoxious here, I'm sure there's a good reason for whatever the problem is, but without knowing what the problem is it's hard to propose a solution for it.

Staples offers a mail reception service, too, but, even if they're relatively close to one, if the person can't make a phone call or pay money for a service or go more than once to a site that won't work.
posted by praemunire at 6:41 PM on May 21 [1 favorite]

You might find my decade old question and follow up comments helpful. I think one of the attempts worked but it doesn't look like I mention which one. I do know some items were lost, and others were returned to me months later.

In theory, general delivery is possible. In practice, it takes a long time and may not even work according to the USPS's own guidelines. From what I've read it may work better in places where there's large traditional usage of it - like the Appalachian Trail.

Sadly you are probably better off using a specific paid service, like FedEx Hold for Pickup, rather than post office general delivery.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 6:54 PM on May 21

I want the recipient to collect it from a post office, pick-up point, locker etc. rather than having it delivered to their home address.

Is there any particular reason why? Just trying to understand the parameters.

The recipient does not have a PO Box

They probably get a PO box for a cheap price in their small city.


When I deliver packages for the USPS that need a signature, but the person isn’t home, we take the package back to the station. We also leave notice where the person can indicate whether they want us to attempt redelivery or that they’ll come pick it up at the station.

So requesting delivery confirmation might be the way to go.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:40 PM on May 21 [2 favorites]

Could you deliver it to their work address? Or if they are regulars at a coffee shop or diner or similar could you arrange for the store owners to hold it for the person in exchange for a tip? Maybe the recipient has a friendly neighbor who will receive packages?
posted by Vatnesine at 9:09 PM on May 21

Maybe there's a convenient package drop location on Bounce. It costs a few dollars to use this service. You would send the pickup person the code from the confirmation email. Most of the pickup locations are pack n' ship type places or retail stores with extra psace.
posted by michaelh at 10:06 PM on May 21

Could you send it to someone ELSE in or near this small California city, and then have the recipient pick up the package at that address? If the city is anywhere close to my medium-size California city, I'd be happy to receive the package.
posted by Dr. Wu at 10:09 PM on May 21

Is there a UPS store or other pack-and-ship place convenient to the person? They will often receive packages (some UPS stores will receive non-UPS packages). They are individually-owned small businesses, though, so the policies of the store will differ and you usually have to call to find out the details. Hours can be flaky, depending on the store.
posted by mskyle at 3:57 AM on May 22

As long as the post office you're sending to offers general delivery service (see that location's specific USPS page), they don't care where it came from. I travel full time and have to use GD pretty often, including a couple shipments from China. Just address it like this:

Myfriend Lastname
GENERAL DELIVERY
(optional phone number) 999-999-9999
City State Zip

But note that they will likely not inform your friend it has arrived even if you use the phone number, and if your friend has carrier service at their home address they will only hold it for 10 days.
posted by Lyn Never at 7:04 AM on May 22

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers. Some general questions were asked but I won't go into details as I've found that the more background one gives in AskMe, the greater the probability that it will be treated as an XY problem and one will be told one shouldn't be trying to do what one is trying to do!

One area I wasn't clear about is that the smoother this is for the recipient, the better. Every additional step they have to take makes any given option less attractive. The ideal is that my only communication is to tell them, "Remember that package I mentioned? Swing by (location) with your ID this week and you can pick it up." Put another way, if I was happy for the recipient to research and arrange the pickup themselves, I wouldn't need to ask this question!

...it is not consistent how general delivery works in different places, there are different policies, hours, even whether a given post office really has it

That wasn't clear to me from my own research, so thanks for highlighting it. It explains why other comments suggested visiting or calling the post office; I thought there would be a national (or at least state) policy.

With Fedex, you can request the package to be held at nearest "depot".

I understand that would require I send the package to the recipient's home address and the recipient would have to contact the courier to request delivery to the depot en route to avoid it being delivered to their home? That's not ideal, but it might work if there was no better option.

Staples offers a mail reception service...

As you say. it looks like this would involve signing up for an account, filling in USPS Form 1583, presenting two IDs and possibly redirecting all mail.

They probably get a PO box for a cheap price in their small city.

This seems to involve quite a lot of form-filling for a one-off delivery which is not ideal.

Maybe there's a convenient package drop location on Bounce.

Looks like a great service for my needs, but as far as I can tell it's mostly available in very large cities.

At the moment the two best options still seem to be General Delivery (which I think would require that I use the national Postal Service to send it) and UPS (which some additional research seems to show will deliver to a UPS store in the USA if I send using their local branch). I will try to find out how those options work out in the specific location.

Thanks again for the advice.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 9:54 AM on May 22

You had the right idea with UPS Access Points. I can't say from experience that they'd work for international shipping, but you could call the local UPS store and ask and get a clear answer -- no need for your friend to be involved.

In general, the key Google query is "package receiving services." This is a fairly common service and many mom and pop shipping services will offer it.
posted by Bryant at 10:44 AM on May 22