Hey folks. I am moving in the next month and have a number of packages from Japan that are exceedingly late, which does not bode well for packages I ordered after those ones. While I stopped ordering weeks ago in anticipation of my move, I am growing concerned about a lot of deliveries that seem stuck in limbo.
I’ve read the summary about mail forwarding on the USPS website, but it’s not clear to me if my shipments coming from overseas will get caught in the net and be forwarded to my new address. Does anyone know if this is the case or have any experience with this issue?
I have used USPS mail forwarding before after changing addresses, but not for international packages so I can’t give a definitive answer for that (however my guess is it would work since once Japan Post hands it off it’s effectively USPS’s job to deliver it at that point).
What I will say though, is mail forwarding with USPS is incredibly unreliable. After moving to a new address, I accidentally ordered a bunch of stuff from TCG Player to my old address due to not noticing my PayPal default. It ended up being like 15 different pieces of mail, some plain white envelopes and some with First Class tracking. It took weeks to even get a single one of them to my new address, and then I kept slowly getting them over the course of months. I think the longest one took 4 months before it eventually make it to me. Some of the envelopes never made it at all.
My experience was when covid was impacting things more than it is now, so that could have contributed to the inconsistencies too. That said, I have heard of people having similar problems as me.
I’ve also had letters end up in my mailbox intended for the previous person living here, despite them having a giant yellow “send to this new address” sticker on it from the USPS forwarding facility. Not really sure how it still made it to their old address even after being flagged for forwarding.
If you’re not moving too far away I would request a hold on all your packages, you can contact the USPS directly and they will do it for you, that way you’ll have peace of mind, specially if they were sent without tracking.
This may be the superior option. I’ve not done that before.
How would I work around the unknown timespan? I’d hate to have to suspend my deliveries for months at a time. But if that’s what it takes I may consider that route.
It’s up to 30 days but maybe they can extend it for you or if they can reset it as soon as it ends; I would also sign up for Informed Delivery if you still haven’t signed up for it, they take a picture/scan of most of your letters/mail so you know what’s arriving, usually the same day.
Anything transferred to USPS will be redirected when you change your address with them—most of my Japan post mail is transferred to USPS. However, everything international (or domestic for that matter) that is sent through private couriers like fedex or dhl must be changed through them. So in this case of moving you have to be diligent about any potential private deliveries from your orders and contact those carriers and request the change of destination—I’ve done this before with fedex and dhl when the destination address was wrong.