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Latest Amazon strategy:
This seems to work for fastest shipping:
I use the USPS "street address" for my PO Box, so more stuff ships FedEx. Not only do the FedEx items leave the amazon warehouse quicker, it's only 2 days to Hilo and the boxes aren't all banged up when they arrive. If it's something I need right away, I can go to the FedEx web site and have them hold the item for pickup at the FedEx station (shaves two days off having it sent to the PO). There is never a line and they are open until 5. I've never done it but according to their website you can also have the FedEx items held for pickup at Walgreens in case you need to pick it up on weekends (including Sunday) or in the evenings, or if Walgreens is just more convenient for you.
The stuff that is sent UPS, I haven't tried to have it held for pickup or re-routed to a different address. If anybody has tried this I would be interested in hearing how it worked out for them.
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General Delivery to Hilo is sometimes an option. They will even call you to come get your package, either at the UPS on airport road, or the Fedex on the makai side of the airport. Otherwise you'll get a weird status like "package delayed in Hilo", which just means they are sitting on it till you show up.
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BTW, nice USPS lady told me you can no longer use the PO Street Address trick unless you are paying for your box. They are cool about it but will cut you off at some point.
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That sucks. You would think they would throw their customers a bone even if they are getting a free box considering that they don't deliver mail to them.
If your PO box is the same zip code as your residence you can put your street address on line #1 and your PO box on line #2 and that should still work. The fedex / uPS packages will go to your house and the mailed stuff to the PO.
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quote:
Originally posted by terracore
That sucks. You would think they would throw their customers a bone even if they are getting a free box considering that they don't deliver mail to them.
If your PO box is the same zip code as your residence you can put your street address on line #1 and your PO box on line #2 and that should still work. The fedex / uPS packages will go to your house and the mailed stuff to the PO.
And one more trick: some online forms will reject PO Boxes in any address line, but if you add the word “Or” before PO Box XXXX, it fools the system into accepting the
PO Box address
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BTW, nice USPS lady told me you can no longer use the PO Street Address trick unless you are paying for your box. They are cool about it but will cut you off at some point.
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As if they have the time to look up which boxes are free? when they are sorting mail?
That is about as senseless as anything at the post office.
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As if they have the time to look up which boxes are free? when they are sorting mail?
Not sure how Keaau Post Office assigns numbers for their entire delivery route, but for HPP our boxes are designated HC (1,2,or 3) followed by a box number, while PO boxes are specified PO Box followed by a number. So no special sorting would be required:
HC 1 Box 1000 - box is free and (most) mail is delivered to HPP mailbox banks
PO Box 1000 - you pay for your box and pick up mail at post office
"I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right - have fun." - Keanu Reeves
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"If your PO box is the same zip code"
I used the street address/PO Box combo with a "different" zip code and it still got here. I live in HPP...and my P.O. Box is in Pahoa. Amazon wouldn't ship to my P.O. Box...but accepted my physical address in HPP for shipping. It was shipped UPS to Honolulu...then given to US Postal Service to finish delivery. The label looked like this
My Name
15-0000 26th av
(or P.O. Box 4560, Pahoa, Hi 96778)
Keaau, Hi 96749
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"And one more trick: some online forms will reject PO Boxes in any address line, but if you add the word “Or” before PO Box XXXX, it fools the system into accepting the
PO Box address"
I've had success with some online forms substituting a zero for an "o" in PO box (P0 BOX vs PO BOX)
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Too early to tell if this will actually work...
But if we didn't NEED something from Amazon right away we started putting our home address only into the delivery address. So when they mailed stuff they wound up getting it back because of course there is no mail delivery in most of Puna.
We used to put our street address in line one and our PO BOX address in line 2, but that trick quit working and anything with our street address was automatically sent back to Amazon.
In the past I've tried talking to their customer service agents and trying to flag my account as DON'T TRY TO MAIL ANYTHING TO THIS ADDRESS. No dice.
Today they said they would note in my account not to use USPS shipping. They also said it's "not 100% guaranteed" but has worked for other people. The only thing that has changed is much of the stuff they have sent to us, the USPS sent it back to them, and now for the first time they have offered this "not 100% guaranteed solution".
I'll let you know if it works out or not.
