Sure. We have a mail slot, and we can hang letters there, but I wouldn’t recommend it for anything valuable or with an ID.
This concept gets italicized? Twice?
Wow, I guess I’ve been taking the USPS for granted.
As an ex-postal worker I find the US mailbox thingy a bit weird.
I used to have people leave mail for me to collect, they’d tape it to the front door.
I told them dozens of times I couldn’t take it as if it went astray I would be the last person to handle it and suspicion would fall on me.
Sorry and all that but it’s my job and name at risk
Incorrect. I own the mailbox at the end of the driveway. I am responsible to see that it’s in good shape, and I can replace it if I want. The USPS does control how that mailbox can be used, what size and what locations are allowed. I can still paint it purple with yellow daisies, if I want.
I know (or so I’ve heard) that tampering with someone’s mail or mailbox is a federal offense.
But I wonder if the property owner of the mailbox would have to press charges or if the USPS can just automatically go after you.
That is let’s say between you and your neighbor your just fine exchanging notes, cards, packages, etc. using the mailbox. Could the USPS go after both of you?
Partially correct – you own the outside of the mailbox. The USPS owns in inside. cite. (PDF; quote below is from page 6).
Having said all that, most mail carriers I’ve worked with sem pretty lenient about party invitations and such being stuck in the mailbox, but YMMV.
Most people don’t bother putting outgoing mail in their mailbox. If it’s important, they’ll drop it in a big blue outgoing mail box. In certain situations (small towns & rural areas), that’s more of a hassle than it’s worth, so the regular box is used.
Some folks find it funny sometimes to fiddle with mailboxes, put in firecrackers, toy with the flag, steal others’ mail 
, but it really depends on the neighborhood and the population density. You have to be pretty bored, cheeky, or stupid to mess with the box.
Where is using the big blue mailbox not more of a hassle than it’s worth? Everyone in my neighborhood – a not-small suburb of DC – lives within a couple blocks of one, but we still use our regular mailboxes for outgoing mail. The little red flags are so cute. 
I’m very happy to finally be living in a community that has “real” mailboxes, instead of small metal boxes with locks on them. When I had one of those as a mailbox I never used it to send mail, because there was no way – short of taping up a note – to indicate that the contents were outgoing. I’d mail stuff from work, or would occasionally use a big blue mailbox.
We have cluster boxes, which is a bank of small metal boxes that lock up with two parcel lockers at the bottom. Sending outgoing mail is easy – box #13 in each cluster has a slot in it and is marked “Outgoing Mail”. Just slide it right in.
Yes they could because, as noted above, you aren’t the one in control of the inside of your mailbox. I doubt they would for occasional use especially if you claimed you didn’t know better but if the matter was pressed in some way, you don’t get to pick what federal laws get enforced and which ones don’t even on your own property.
Teenages playing mailbox baseball is one of the dumbest ideas in the world and you can get into a world of hurt for that type of thing. It doesn’t matter if all the homeowners decide they will just settle for damages. I had some friends that did it in high school and it ended up with a federal investigation, lawyers, and the whole bit for about a year. They didn’t end up with any extreme penalty but the whole process and worry was punishment enough.
It is best not to mailboxes at all or you might find some uniformed people knocking on your door even for party invitations.
So it sounds like when I took the mail that was misdelivered to me and put it in the neighbor’s mailbox, I was committing a federal crime? :eek:
Maybe I shouldn’t have posted that here… <she says as she looks around furtively…>
I put out-going mail in my mailbox and put up the flag. And if I don’t have stamps I just put money in there to cover the postage and my mailman will make change and put the stamp on the letter. About once a month she’ll put a little orange envelope in there so I can buy a bunch of stamps, but I never use it.
On the downside, my mailman hit and killed my dog, so she owes me.
StG
Yep. That’s what the red flag is for, to alert the postal worker to outgoing mail in case s/he isn’t going to be dropping any off.
If the sender paid postage, I can’t imagine how you’d be committing a crime to put it in the correct mailbox. It’s legitimately mail, not “non-mail” like postage-less flyers and notes.
This is a very interesting thread. I never knew you could put outgoing mail in your house’s mailbox, I thought that’s what those boxes like this are for. I’ve never even had a mailbox until a few years ago, when I bought one to attach outside the front door of my house. Until then all my incoming mail would come in through the slot in the front door.
Three sounds most likely to me.
I think sometimes that I wish people were allowed to put flyers inside the mailbox. About once every other week, I have to walk to a random point in my yard and pick up a rolled up advertisement that’s been tossed into my grass. (What a great first impression to a potential customer, eh? Throw litter on their lawn!)
Though that’s still better than the group that rubber banded their flyer to the mailbox flag.
Yes, but you can also put outgoing mail on (and probably in) a typical house mailbox, which doesn’t have a flag. Most people I’ve seen use a clothespin to clip it to a box that’s on the outside of the house. We don’t have a box, just a slot beside the door, and we sometimes leave outgoing mail in the slot.
This thread has certainly illustrated an aspect of American life I wasn’t aware of. We only have mail pick-up from boxes as well as delivery in our rural areas.
Not all urban routes will pick up at the house mailbox. It’s not required, some places make you go to a big blue mailbox, others will pick up at the house. Not sure who decides and why.
I’m used to seeing the big blue mailboxes in telly programmes and movies from America, hence my surprise on reading this thread. I did wonder why the flag business on domestic boxes – hey, now I know! We have some copies of those boxes here – right down to the (redundant here in NZ) flag. 