Dealing with our mail wasn’t quite as easy as we initially expected. Before we moved into our RV, we read lots of blog posts on this topic. However, as we tried to figure out our mail needs, Keith and I quickly discovered we were at odds.
I wanted a scanning service, while Keith wanted to go with a forwarding service. Each one provided us with a legitimate address where folks could send us mail. Where they differed is in what they did with the mail once they received it for us.
Deciding between scanning or forwarding
Mail scanning seemed like the obvious solution to me. Once our items arrived, they’d scan it all to an email address – and voila — it’s ready to be read. This was the ideal for my needs. I switched to electronic billing long ago, so I don’t really get much mail. I am also a minimalist at heart. So the fewer items received, the less paper for me to recycle. The only downside to this option was that Keith and I have different email addresses. Neither of us wanted our email inbox flooded with the other’s junk mail.
The mail forwarding option made more sense to Keith. Once they receive your mail, they put it aside and wait until you ask them to forward it to a specified address. They can send it to you as frequently or seldom as you like.
The downside of this option – at least in my opinion – is that each time they send your items, you get charged for the postage. I don’t want to pay for junk mail or ads to get forwarded to me. Fortunately, for a small increase in cost, these forwarding services can also sort your mail by class and only forward those items you might actually want.
Since Keith has a few magazine subscriptions that he really enjoys getting in hard copy, forwarding definitely seemed like the better option for him. Also, most forwarding services can scan items that you may need in a more time sensitive fashion (for an additional fee).
In the end, we went with Escapees mail forwarding and sorting service. They have a great reputation in the full-time RV community and are conveniently located in Texas, where we were already residents. This option met Keith’s magazine needs, but allowed us to get things scanned if/when we needed them.
No mail for the first month was great!
Setting up the forwarding service with Escapees was super easy. Within a day, we had a unique mailing address. The customer service was great, and the person I spoke with simply asked me to give them a call when we wanted our mail forwarded the first time.
We didn’t have any pressing items to receive that first month, so I didn’t expect to ask them to forward anything to our location in Kansas while I was wrapping up my job. In fact, I noted that it was actually quite nice not getting any mail those first three weeks.
There were a few items that I knew I needed to keep an eye out for though. First, we knew the check refunding our rent deposit would come within 30 days of us moving out. Second, I was selling back my old MacBook when I upgraded to a new one. The vendor purchasing it was sending me a special padded box to forward the laptop in.
Our first mail forwarding event
After hitting the road, we planned to be at private campground up on Minnesota’s north shore for five nights. We were arriving on a Sunday and departing on Friday. As we prepared to head up north, I called Escapees to get our mail forwarded for the first time. The person who answered my call that Friday afternoon was very polite, and told me they would be happy to send everything out on Monday.
Monday?! At first I was a little taken aback. I’m not sure what I was thinking though. Perhaps, I believed the person on the other end was just waiting for the phone to ring and itching to race off to the post office as soon as I called. Clearly that’s not how it works.
So while I was a little surprised by her response, I was really just kicking myself for not calling a day or two earlier. Oh well. Lesson learned. It it probably didn’t really matter. After all, the mail only needed to go from Texas to Minnesota. That’s literally a straight shot up I-35. How long could it take? Even if they mailed it out on Monday, everything should easily be there by Thursday.
Getting our mail
On Monday afternoon, Escapees emailed me to let me know our mail and the box for the laptop were mailed off as promised. Since the box was coming via priority mail, I even had a USPS tracking number showing it was due at the campground by 8pm on Thursday. Of course, this had me wondering if the envelope with all our mail would arrive in time. Priority mail is usually faster that first class mail. But, I told myself to stay positive.
When I went to the campground’s front office to pick up our mail around 6pm on Thursday, the lady there couldn’t find anything for us. After checking the back (twice), she finally came out with a small 6×9 envelope containing our mail. Unfortunately, there definitely was no box for my laptop.
I checked the USPS tracking number again while standing at the counter. The package was still out for delivery and scheduled to arrive by 8pm. The lady immediately started chucking and said my box definitely would not be arriving that day.
Campgrounds versus suburban neighborhoods
You see, here’s where rural campgrounds can differ from that your sticks and brick home. Out here in the middle of Minnesota, the local post office was literally only 500 yards up the road. The mailman didn’t even deliver mail to the campground. One of the employees just walked up to the post office to get their mail each day.
Moreover, the small little post office is only open from 12:30 pm to 4pm from Monday to Friday. So, if my package didn’t get picked up already, there wouldn’t be any way I was going to get it until at least 12:30 the following day.
Well, that news was a kick to the head!! The one item I was confident would arrive while we were at the campground was now delayed by a day. Plus, the envelope with all our forwarded mail turned out to be mostly worthless stuff that I didn’t care about at all. Most of it would be recycled within 10 minutes. And Keith didn’t even get a magazine!
So, instead of taking off at a decent hour toward our next campground on Friday, I had to sit around until 12:30 waiting for the post office to open to get my box. The biggest joke was that the box came with a prepaid label to send the laptop back to the vendor. But it was a FedEx label. So, I couldn’t even send it back from that dang post office that I’d been stalking all morning!
Final Score: Mail – 1; Paty – 0
The fun keeps on going though. Read more about my challenges with ordering from Amazon while on the road.