Mail Service

depends where you live.... rural boxes are not always safe... and if you are in a questionable neighborhood same thing.

Remember, mail theft is a federal offense... this is the USA....I have a friend who had a check stolen  from the mail here; he did get it back and they were caught and charged....

Depends, if you have a regular street name and house number, you can get your mail at home. Otherwise get PO Box. At post office ask for the detailed address so UPS, FedEx and others can deliver packages there.

Some people prefer to get it at post office so there is no risk of somebody stealing the mail.

Depends. There is no delivery in my neighborhood.  Some of my neighbors have a box at the local post office. I opted to get a mailbox at a store, because they will also accept UPS, FEDEX, etc. It is much easier, because you may not know how a company is going to ship an item for you when you give them your address.

We live in rural Sabana Grande, we decided to get a PO box since it is safer and more convenient. USPS will not leave a package at your house (at least not on our neighborhood) unless there is someone to sign for it. So you will still have to go to the post office. A small PO Box will run you $60/6 months.

Also, UPS will leave packages at post offices in your town if you have a PO Box.

We have a rural route box, works perfectly. Also the friendly lady who does our route delivers large envelopes and packages to our home, almost a mile away from the boxes. She leaves packages at a neighbor when we're not there like we receive packages for neighbors when they're not there.
No complaints at all about the USPS.

I guess I'll add the comment that if you live in an apartment building (at least in San Juan), the mailman will generally have a key & deliver to the mailboxes of the building, just as in the U.S. (This can also mean it is better to receive packages shipped by USPS rather than FedEx or UPS as they will not have a key. In our case, the building has a security guard so they will accept packages shipped by FedEx/UPS.)

We have delivery to the house by the carrier.  For security I purchased a locking mail box and mounted it to the wall. 

For outgoing, I drop at the PO.   For large item delivery, I have a sign that directs the delivery man to the rear.

When we first moved to Quebradilla, our landlord took us to the Post Office to get a box since there are no mailboxes in our part of the street .they go up to my nearest neighbor and I guess this guy didn't want to put in a mailbox so he got a p.o. box.  It has worked out well and we usually go every other day to check mail.  Luckily it is on the way into town.  However, we wanted to put up a mailbox so my husband built one and we went to the post office to get the number (even though we could figure what number it would be by the other houses here) and it tool a couple of weeks for them to give us the formal letter with the number, We tested it out buy having one of our relatives send something to it. but we still use the p.o. box since it is more trouble than anything to have to change our address with everyone that sends us mail.

Now we are moving to a different town and are keeping our p.o, box for the next 6 months and then we may get one in Isabela.  The owner of the house where we are moving has mailboxes set up and he said we could use them also but I really don't want anyone going through our mail so we will be using a po box for the forseeble future. We don't mind coming here to check mail, it will always be hone to us even if we are in a different town. By the way, our box is $43.00 for 6 months.

Take care,

Tonie

We live in a Condo community where the mailbox numbers do not correlate to your unit number. The units also are all unmarked therefore USPS/UPS/Fedex can't tell who to deliver to. If a security guard is available, they hold it until I pick up. If not, it get's sent back to the carriers office until we pick up.

My in laws have a PO Box since they live in a neighborhood where no delivery is available at all.

It's just going to depend where you move to, if I had the option I would use an all in one service like Frogrock has, especially if they had after work hours. It's a lot less hassle and you know when you're getting your packages.

I have looked at the mail services that will scan your mail and let you decide what to do with it - forward, open and scan, shred, whatever - but they charge $15 per month.  too costly, I wish a cheap service was available.

We will be back and forth to the states and PR, so for now I'm changing address with the USPO.

Anyone have a better way to manage mail delivery between two homes?

For bills we pay everything on line. Most of the mail we get is junk mail. This last stay in the island, after 3 weeks of mail in the house in Texas, 90%was junk. We keep a PO Box for packages we send to the island. We noticed not as much junk mail gets delivered to the PO Box.

When I lived in Arroyo the UPS man would call me when he was on is way and I would meet him at the gate to get my package.  One of the benefits of living in a small town with nice people.

I would have to go to the Arroyo post office to pick up USPS packages.  Met a lot of nice folks and the postmaster knew who I was when I walked in the door.  Somewhat the "Cheers" of Arroyo, where every knows your name.

If you get a PO Box, but are having large packages shipped to you (from a variety of carriers: USPS, Fedex, UPS) will they still hold them for you?

Yes they do!

No problem with large packages delivered to our P.O. Box via usps, but we often have a hard time with fed ex or ups accepting our P.O. Box as a valid shipping address, they require a physical address.

There are a few p.o. out there that niw will give you a "physical" address, along with any rented box. Rincón is one. They accept ups & fedex packages.

That's great to know. I'll check with our local PO.
Thank you!

You can sign a form allowing the post office to accept packages from other carriers for you (Fed Ex etc).  You can also write the PO address in a way that doesn't look like it's a po box by using the physical street address. For example - for our PO Box in Rincon, I use their street address to get shipments from companies that say they won't deliver to a PO box:

100 CARR 115 UNIT (Your PO Box #)
RINCON, PR 00677