Traveling Mailbox by far offers more bang for the buck!

http://www.TravelingMailbox.com

Feel free to chime in with your experience so far, and enjoy!

It’s a good thing I was able to come across this article when I did a Google search. It seems you’ve done quite a bit of legwork for yourself and have generously shared the results.

My situation is that I am a customer of the USPS in the farthest reaches of the United States. I live on the island of Saipan, in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Apart from some possible notoriety for connection to recent political scandals, practically all of the United States doesn’t know that the CNMI exists. Our nearest neighbor, Guam, inspite of recent US military news, is also still barely known by majority of Americans. Apparently, corporate USA, as in the major retailers, also do not know that the CNMI exists, as their online shopping systems almost always fail to provide an option to select state code MP, which stands for Marianas Pacific and is a part of our USPS. Guam’s GU state code fares only slightly better. Majority of US eBay vendors do not want to ship outside of the continental US. I guess I can’t blame the rest of America for not really hearing about the CNMI, considering the remote location and the small population (around 50,000). Guess what? The USPS does not deliver mail to physical addresses here because, it has only been around 5 years since there have been formal street names, and everyone just rents their post office boxes to get mail!

So you see the predicament I’m in. My location is so far away that using commercial courier service is too expensive, and my USPS location will already eliminate the possibility of ordering online from certain vendors. I’m losing out on possible savings by buying from a limited number of vendors.

I checked out the Virtual Post Mail website, and I’m confused with the information they are providing. They say that they online P.O. boxes, but at the same time they are providing a street / physical address. What is clear is they are asking for 2 requirements to sign up, on of which is the USPS Form 1583 to sign up for a post office box. So which one is it really? And does this mean that they will provide a street address but forward your mail through the USPS P.O. box that you are required to sign up for? This means that I will have my existing, halfway-around-the-world post office box here in Saipan, but I will have a new post office box probablyl in Walnut, California? My preference is not only to have a US continent-based mailing address, but a physical / street mailing address, not a P.O. box as many vendors use commercial courier services that do not ship to P.O. boxes. Would Virtual Post Mail be the service I need?

The guy from Australia who posted earlier, I wonder whether he would be qualified to get a P.O. box using Form 1583 or not, considering his foreign location. I know other foreigners who order a lot of stuff from the U.S. but need to ask favors from US-based friends to do it for them.

>but what I really meant was what’s under the hood (aka View Source

Got it. You do know ATMS run on COBOL and CICS?

I probably should have clarified my statement by expanding on what I mean by quality of their website. I’m realizing most people are taking that as design or “flash”, but what I really meant was what’s under the hood (aka View Source ) If they seem up to date in the technology powering their site and it’s intelligently and efficiently done, to me at least, it says a lot about how they run other aspects of their company. SBI feels “mom and pop” and their new demo doesn’t really help either (why don’t they create a dummy account so we can actually USE it?) – I can’t help but picture their data center with big CRT monitors and Windows 3.1! All kidding aside, I think SBI will suffice for some people – but as a fellow nerd I absolutely love VPM and recommend you try their demo.