Given a 9-digit postal zip code, and an accompanying PO Box for it, can one determine the specific post office that houses that box?
More specifically, can I figure out what post office my Netflix distribution center (at zip code 23285-5013) uses, and if I could, could I return my DVDs directly to that office as soon as they opened as if I were shipping out of there?
Would I hand the envelope to the clerk, at which point he would notice that the address is there, and put it in with the rest?
The goal would be to shave a day off of the Netflixing cycle.
That zip is used only for P.O. Boxes. I don’t see the information easily available online, but if you call your local post offices, they may indicate if it’s theirs.
I don’t know if post office boxes work differently, but for house delivered mail, it all has to go through a central post office in your area. If I want to mail something to the guy who lives in the next apartment over, and I take it to our local post office, it gets shipped to Naperville, about 45 miles away, and then back to our local post office, and only then handed to a mail carrier to bring back to my building. I cannot simply hand it to my mail carrier when I see him and ask him to place it in my neighbor’s mailbox. (This is according to my mail carrier, anyway.)
If Netflix’s PO box were at the Naperville post office, it would indeed save me turn-around time to take it there. (Of course, I’d have to make a 90 minute drive to do so.) But unless your Netflix’s box is at the central office, it won’t save you.
Even if the zip code does let you recognize the post office, returning the package directly to them won’t necessarily save any time. In this area ALL first-class mail goes to the big downtown post office for sorting and ALL 2nd and 4th class mail goes to a parcel center in the suburbs. The local post offices are only set up to take the pre-sorted mail in break it into smaller subsections for carrier routes, etc.
I’m confused by what you mean when you say it’s only used for PO Boxes. The +4 bit identifies a fairly specific area of the city that the mail is headed to. My +4 is 7109, but the person 4 houses down is 7108. True, most of the time a PO Boxes +4 is some form of the PO Box number itself, but the use isn’t limited strictly to them.
which allows you to look up the Zip+4 information, and it returns the addresses linked to it.
(Of course, now that the caffeine has kicked in, I now understand what **RealityChuck ** meant by “That zip is only used by PO Boxes”) Sorry about that.
My Netflix distribution center has the ZIP of the main downtown post office. That isn’t my home ZIP, but the PO is only about 5 miles from my house and I end up in the neighborhood from time to time. If I drop my DVDs in the downtown PO’s mailboxes right before the last evening pickup (8pm), I’ll have an email by 8am the next morning saying they’ve received my movies.
I’ve never tried getting it in for a morning pickup and seeing if I get same day notice. My guess is that Netflix gets one drop early in the morning, so it wouldn’t do any good.
Someone in a previous Netflix thread said he gets movies the day after returning the old ones (mail movie on Monday, get new one on Tuesday), so he may be mailing them at the same post office used by Netflix early enough in the morning that they picked up and processed that same day. I thought I was doing well to get two-day service most of the time (mail movie on Monday, get new one on Wednesday).