Overview
It’s been a long time since the Internet hit the tipping point and more people were using email than those who weren’t, but the USPS is still around, despite everyone saying it wouldn’t last. Sure, they’re struggling, and have for years, but paper mail still gets delivered. They’ve threatened taking away Saturday delivery, but they somehow manage to keep running at a billion dollar deficit, all the while raising the price of a postage stamp to try and increase revenues. Apparently they’re not going anywhere any time soon, and Mailbox Forwarding is here to help you deal with your real mail needs.
The Claim
Mailbox Forwarding claims that no matter what you have sent to your virtual mailbox, they can handle it. This includes all of your paper mail, but also includes packages. This allows you to send everything to one address, and then use your account like a command center to determine what to do with it. If something is junk you can have it shredded and recycled. If you want to read something, you can have it opened and scanned so you can read it in your email. If you want it forwarded on to another address, it can be done. You can also receive faxes with their service.
The Cost
It’s $14.95 per month to use Mailbox Forwarding, which if you compare this to other mailbox services is a very reasonable price, considering most other services don’t include scanning and shredding and recycling as part of their price. You can get your first month free by entering the promo code “freemonth” when you’re checking out.
That’s if you’re happy with a Michigan mailing address. If
you want to have a Florida or a California address it will cost you extra. This doesn’t seem like a very good business model as far as scaling things goes. They should have it set up so that it doesn’t matter which state you’re in, you should be able to use it at no extra charge regardless of where you’re located. It’s clear their headquarters is in Michigan, but that doesn’t mean they need to be charging a surcharge because you want an address that isn’t in Michigan.The Commitment
You don’t have to be signed on for any long-term contracts, you can cancel your service at any time, and any further mail will be forwarded to you for up to 6 months, at your expense, so you’d want to get the address changed at the time you cancel.
Evaluation
Sometimes it’s hard for a business or an individual to avoid paper mail. Between junk mail and important bills and paperwork, it’s not like you can just function without a mailing address. More and more files are being sent electronically in PDF format, but until the day comes when everything can be sent that way, it’s still necessary to deal with snail mail. If you’re always on the go ordinary mail can be quite inconvenient, because it means you have to stay in one place if you want to receive it. With Mailbox Forwarding you can literally go anywhere and not worry about missing an important piece of mail.
One concern that people may have is they don’t like the idea of someone opening their mail, and scanning it. This is just something that you’d have to get over if you want to use the service, because until they figure out how to train helper monkeys to open mail and scan it, you’re out of luck. You’ll just have to trust that the employees there just open and scan, and not open, read, and scan. Unless you’re receiving rather sensitive material, or the secret recipe for KFC chicken, you’re probably alright.
Mailbox Forwarding is receiving our Thumbs Up review, based on the price as well as the amount of features it includes, and how handy it is. They’re
still a relatively small start-up, but we suspect that this is a sound business model and they should be expanding into other markets soon, with other addresses available to sign up for. Right now they have three to choose from, Michigan, Florida, and California. It seems the next logical addition would be New York. If you don’t care where your mailbox is located, go with Michigan for the most cost-effective option.Our Recommendation
Try them out for the free month, but be prepared to stay on, especially if you don’t mind having your mail sent to a Michigan address. If you’ve always wanted to blur the line between your real world mail and your email, this is the way to do it. Whether you want to give the appearance of having a real world presence, or whether you just want all of your mail sent to one address and then you can decide what to do with it from there, this is set up to take care of anything you can think of.
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View Comments
I'm an expat and have been using MBF for 8 years. I've set most things up to receive electronically, but there's still a few pieces of physical mail. They scan, I save the PDF on my computer. Once in a while the bank sends me a new credit card. MBF forwards it to me. It costs about $60 to do so (priority mail) but it's worth it. Standard mail would take longer and doesn't have tracking.
One complaint: I entered a different card to use for my monthly payment with them. The next payment however came out of old card which caused me a lot of difficulty. It was why I updated the card info in their system ahead of time in the first place - to avoid putting charges on the old card. When I went back into my MBF account, my new card info wasn't there, only the old. When I asked MBF, they said: "We had a database problem and had to restore from backup." Yet they never advised their customers. A database restore rolls all customers back to a certain point - and ye they never thought they should let their customers know. If they had, I could have updated my CC info again before billing time.
We are expats from California, living in Spain, and have been using the service for 2 months now. We simply couldn't be happier! The toughest part of using the service is the USPS itself - it seems to take them FOREVER to forward mail to Michigan from California. Anything that we have changed our address on gets there just fine, it's just the items that the USPS has to forward.
I like that you always know what something is going to cost before you spend the money. For example, we needed to have an item forwarded to us here in Spain, and when you set up the forward request, they provide a link to USPS, FedEx, etc, in order for you to make the decision. I'm glad they did because instead of spending $165 for FedEx Ground, I was able to choose USPS International Priority for only $35.
Their support has been quick and responsive when needed.
I can't say enough about how much we love the service, and how easy it has made our transition overseas!
Good commentary . I was enlightened by the specifics - Does anyone know where I might be able to obtain a fillable USPS PS 1583 document to fill out ?
Suppose your bank mails you a bank card?
I was a customer of Mailbox Forwarding, and the treatment they subjected me to is making me do something I don't remember doing in the recent time - writing a review to warn others. Mailbox Forwarding and I had it off to a great start: the good pricing, the features, I was in love. I didn't mind they didn't have a number to call. Or that their emails were all signed "Support" with no name. I didn't even mind when I sent them a pre-addressed piece of mail asking them to affix a US post stamp on it and deposit it in the mail - and they charged me the handling fee AND double the cost of the post stamp claiming "it's because we're not set up to affix post stamps". Apparently the handling fee was not enough - the post stamp also needed to cost 200% of the retail price. I wonder why it was 200%, not 300% or 400%. They just decided it's going to be double the cost. OK. So for four months, while being out of the country, I was using Mailbox Forwarding to receive, forward and exchange paperwork with various authorities, and the end result was supposed to be my APOSTILLIZED divorce decree from the Secretary of State. This was no little thing to complete, and I was so happy I was moving close to having that precious paper on hand, as it was necessary for renewal of my passport abroad. And finally, I got notification from Mailbox Forwarding that yes, I have a letter from the Secretary of State. Ecstatic, I ordered that piece of mail scanned so that I could see that this was indeed my apostillized divorce decree. Mailbox Forwarding scanned the thing - but here's the unbelievable part - they ripped off the Secretary of State's guilded seal, unsealed the pages - - now this apostille, unsealed, was worth nothing - four months of work out the window. With no word of apology Mailbox FOrwarding said verbatim, 'No one said to not cut it. In order for us to scan, we have to have the individual pages." Yes, they could have removed a staple. But, sorry, to break an Apostille seal - that's just negligent and thoughtless. We finally agreed that they would reimburse me for the costs of all the mailings leading up to the Apostille, and they credited me with $28 - the price of four months and still being stuck with an expired passport. The amazing thing was that as they issued the credit, they cancelled my account. Things still didn't end there. At termination of contract, they are obligated by law to send whatever mail they had collected for a person up to that point. I provided the address and requested tracking service, to which they responded - and it was their last email, verbatim: "Too late. We already sent you all your things by first class. And you can call me Ziploc. You are not a customer anymore." 'Call me Ziploc' - that was their answer to my earlier question what the name of the person was. I never received my remaining mail from them. I'm most sure they just threw it away. I hope that brought them a sense of redemption. Good job, Mailbox Forwarding! Stay away from them by all means.
I have used them for a couple years without problems, then they stopped notifying me when mail arrived, thus racking up charges. I tried to get it resolved but did not get an answer. Most recently I forwarded some mail to myself and received a package with someone else's mail. It was a set of checks from their newly opened bank account! I notified mailboxforwarding and they asked me to shred the mail for them and said the customer "didn't want the mail" and hadn't been paying on his account. Meanwhile, where did my mail go? Still unresolved after several interactions. If it goes well, it goes well. But things can go quite wrong also.
Dear customers,
I am a private investigator hired by a customer of Mailbox Forwarding. After a 2 month investigation, I have determined that Mailbox Forwarding is mail fraud. It appears to be a scam to cash checks and steal valuables. This company is in violation of Federal law. I have reported this fraud to my colleagues at the US Postal Service, which is beginning an official investigation with the cooperation of the FBI and the IRS. I am sorry to be bearer of bad news, but I recommend that you cancel all payments immediately. Credit card companies will honor your request even if the company ignores it, as it did for my client.
I was pretty happy with it and it seemed to work very well. I'm abroad and was getting a couple of pieces a mail a month. I did notice that my billing seemed to be increasing - to around $30 a month after a while.
The problem (and it's well hidden away) is that they charge nearly a $1 for any retained piece of mail. Therefore if you don't shred items out of your Q after having them scanned you get charged.
While I understand their other charges I doubt that it really costs them $1 to keep an item for a month and this is how they drive their profitability
I've been using a virtual mailbox service for almost a year now and have been quite pleased with the result. The one thing that my service doesn't have that Mailbox Forwarding does is the fax feature - a feature that I think is pretty cool, but one that I don't think I would ever use.
The hardest part about using a virtual service is getting it setup. The USPS requires a notarized Form 1583 before they allow companies like this to scan and open your mail. There are quick work arounds, though, especially for those of us who are already abroad, which I detailed in the article here:
There are a number of alternative companies that do this same service, but Mailbox Forwarding is certainly a good one. Thanks for the review here!
I just signed up for their free one month trial and my bank card was immediately charged $39.95. This caused me an incredible hardship as I'm on a very strict budget. I sent them an email for a refund. The msg on the screen showed me to expect a reply in one to two days. As I'm sure you all know, billing issues using your bank card are not solved in a day.....usually it takes several days or even more.
I'm hoping this will be corrected ASAP but now I'm worried I can't trust them to bill my card properly or process a check that comes for me. I'm already starting to regret signing up for them. This service is supposed to cause less headache not more, isn't that correct?
I've been a customer of mailboxforwarding for 3.5 years. I use them for incoming letters for my business. Most of it they scan, and the rest I have them forward internationally at need.
Their forwarding prices for envelopes are standard USPS (which is cheap) + handling, which was much lower than many others at the time I investigated.
Happy customer here!
p.s. if I know I'm getting a credit card or other super-sensitive information, I have them forward it to me unopened. They claim to have video surveillance of the mail scanning area, but it seems prudent to be careful.