One of the questions that I have received is how we are getting our mail.<\/p>\n
We have used two separate methods.<\/p>\n
Method One <\/strong><\/p>\n While in the UK, we used a mail service called, US Global Mail. \u00a0Basically we signed up for a virtual mailbox at their office in Texas. \u00a0We then filled out an official USPS form which gave them permission to open and receive our mail. We filled out an online form at the US postal service website to set up a temporary forward to our new US Global Mail address. \u00a0While we were in the UK, we’d get an email letting us know when they got mail, and they would scan the envelope so we could see what it was. \u00a0For each piece of mail we could either: open it and have it scanned, throw it out, or package it up and have it sent to us. \u00a0While in the UK, we had our mail bundled and sent to us monthly for a cost of about $35 bucks. \u00a0If something was urgent we liked having the ability to have it scanned for immediate gratification. \u00a0They charged us per page. \u00a0The temporary mail forward weeded out a lot of junk mail. \u00a0We had problem with the mail forward because we have last names. \u00a0We each needed to put on a temporary mail forward. \u00a0When we had about 10 days left in England we cancelled the mail forward and changed it to a mail hold. \u00a0We did this on a day that there was no mail service to make sure they happened with out a delay. We had US global send all of our mail to our home address. All of our mail was waiting for us when we stopped home for 5 days in between the UK and Hawaii. Before we put all of this into motion we talked to our local mail carrier, who reassured us that there wouldn’t be any problem.<\/p>\n Method Two<\/strong><\/p>\n For Hawaii, we took advantage of the fact we were still in the US and rented a PO box in Hilo. This would work just like US global mail except the temporary Mail Forward would go to our PO box instead of the US Global mail address. \u00a0The main obstacle was that we could not get our PO Box address until we on the island. \u00a0So we decided to an initial temporary mail \u00a0forward to “General Delivery” to the Hilo Post office, and update it once we got our PO box. \u00a0We found out that we could not update the address for our temporary mail forward even though it looked like we could. \u00a0We ended up cancelling the first temporary mail forward and then creating a new one. \u00a0This solution has worked out very well. \u00a0We have been able to use Amazon prime to our PO Box in Hilo – they seem to prefer USPS when shipping to Hawaii. \u00a0We do not get two day to Hawaii. It is more like 3-5 days, but still free. \u00a0On December 25th (non-Mail delivery day) we will cancel the temporary forward and put a mail hold. \u00a0When we close the PO Box in Hilo, if we are still getting forwarded mail, we will ask if we can forward the mail back to our home address. \u00a0I am not sure it will work. \u00a0We are pretty sure nothing will need to be forwarded. \u00a0We have learned that mail is just a pain, and not much of it is important. \u00a0It is nice that we were able to XMAS cards.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the questions that I have received is how we are getting our mail. We have used two separate methods. Method One While in the UK, we used a mail service called, US Global Mail. \u00a0Basically we signed up for a virtual mailbox at their office in Texas. \u00a0We then filled out an official … Continue reading Getting Snail Mail in Hawaii – Long term vacation mail forwarding in UK and Hawaii<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,105,107,109,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expat-mail","category-mail","category-mail-forwarding","category-us-global-mail","category-vacation-mail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":539,"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions\/539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.searsie.com\/sabbatical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}