Another advantage of having a slot in the front door is that we also have our newspapers delivered through it . This means you do not have to go out onto the front lawn to retrieve them. There is nothing nicer on a cold winter’s morning then getting out of bed , collecting the papers from the hallway , making yourself a cup of tea and then getting back into bed to read to papers . All without having to get dressed.
Unfortunately, we can’t do that in the US. The USPS is pretty adamant about mailboxes being only for the delivery of the mail. You may NOT stuff non-postal flyers, etc, in the mailbox. This is one reason why newspapers hand out their own “tube route” boxes in rural areas. It seems to extend to mail slots - I have one, and hand delivered ad circulars are attached to the front door handle, stuck in the door, or left on the driveway, NOT shoved through the mail slot. I don’t get a real newspaper, but the unasked for local “community” weekly is left on the driveway. The guy who cuts my lawn leaves his bill stuck in the door.
Surely if you have a slot in your front door that is nothing to do with the USP and anyone can post things through there ? I must add that on the rare occasions that people in this country have an external mail box at the end of their drive, it is their own property and nothing to do with Royal Mail ( our postal service ) . So again anything can be posted in there. In fact the Royal Mail don’t own or operate any mailboxes.
I doubt that a explanation is possible, Rayne Man. USPS doesn’t own the device, only the right to use it. Actually, I think it benefits us. the recipients. I can imagine all the additional crap, in addition to junk mail, that would get crammed in there if it were allowed.
So , as I said above , all the junk mail gets left outside your front door . A perfect advertisement for indicating when you haven’t been at home for a few days. 
Actually, door slots do seem to be excluded under the “customer mail receptacles” rules presented by the USPS below, but that’s not the way they are treated. Hand delivered stuff does not get stuffed through the mail slot.
http://pe.usps.gov/text/dmm/d041.htm#Rbi31049
This is enforced. Businesses know enough not to stuff hand delivered ad circulars in mailboxes. They’ll get fined. Neighbors might leave notes for each other in their mailboxes occasionally - they seem to let that sort of thing slide. Those rules DO also say:
As I said, that doesn’t seem to be the way they are treated, though.
Yes. A standard remedy is to tell your neighbor that you’ll be gone for a few days, and ask if they would pick the crap up from your driveway and front door.
And actually, as I read the USPS rules it’s not clear whether “door slots” are intended only to apply to apartment house mailboxes like those “troughs and bins”, or whether the rule excludes door slots in general, including those on private houses. I suppose it’s possible that the USPS really does assert control over what is passed through my mail slot.
I am being a bit flippant here. Surely the USPS saying what can and cannot be posted through your own front-door mail slot is restricting the right of free speech, as laid down in your glorious constitution . ( Don’t take that remark too seriously , please )
I’ve lived in places with all of these different options:
1968-73: Seattle, single family home on small privately owned road, row of boxes at the corner by the public street.
1973-74: DC suburbs, row house, slot in door
1974-77: Seattle, single family home on public street, single box located on opposite side of street
1977-82: DC suburbs, single family home, single box at end of driveway. These frequently got knocked over, usually by accident, either by the postman or someone not paying attention. So the fashion in our neighborhood came to be the fortress-box, sometimes even bricked over, which our homeowners’ association discouraged.
1982-84: See 1974-77.
1984-86: See 1977-82.
1986-90: College in small town. Box in student union post office.
1991-2005: Various apartments, Manhattan & Brooklyn, with cluster of boxes on ground floor. What I don’t like about these is that you really can’t send outgoing mail with any reliability at all–occasionally, people will jam misdelivered letters in a crack in the cluster, hoping the carrier will notice it, but I’m not sure the carriers can take outgoing mail pieces even if they want to. Anyone know? (Oh, my misdelivered mail, I’m referring to stuff for the wrong building, not simply for the wrong unit.)
One more point of clarification - “junk mail” DOES appear in your mailbox, that is, stuff that the sender paid direct mail rates on to be delivered by the USPS. What does not get placed in there are things like circulars for the local pizza parlor which the business delivered themselves. Those get hung on the door / left on the front porch, etc. Often, they are even printed on forms with a convenient “hook” to allow them to be hung from door handles. There’s a limited amount of this sort of stuff.
I understand that . It is all the other stuff , such as flyers and newspapers , that seem to be banned from your mailboxes.
The only input the Royal Mail has regarding the mail slot is its dimensions. There is a recommended size so that most letters and small packets can be delivered . This is no problem because the the hardware on sale for them ( such as the flaps and fancy brass surrounds ) all seem to conform to a fixed pattern .
Another difference between the two countries is that we don’t have screen doors so the slot is more accessible because the mail-man does not have to open this outer door to get to it.
Actually, this is something I’ve wondered about since moving from home, where I always had a regular mailbox, to an apartment complex with no office. Can someone explain what happens in this situation? If by some remote chance, all ten of the apartments in my complex were to all receive bulky packages on the same day, what would the postman do?
Unless the sender has placed a “restricted delivery” on the package, the carrier will often ask someone in a neighboring apartment if he or she would be willing to sign for the package. The carrier then leaves a note on the addressee’s mailbox or door saying that a package for you was delivered to Apt. _.
If the package does not need to be signed for at all, the U.S. Postal Service will sometimes just leave it on top of the mailboxes, or on the floor below it, or outside the addressee’s apartment door. Not the best choice, in my opinion.
“CBU” = Cluster Box Unit.
If I get a parcel that won’t fit in the mailbox in the lobby of my apartment building, the letter carrier leaves a card and I have to go pick it up at a nearby Canada Post outlet. Unfortunately, they always leave it at the outlet at Queenway and Royal York instead of the outlet conveiently across the street… 
It does not matter when your house was built. It all depends on the kind of postal route your house is on. AskNott’s post pretty much explains it.
You do not have a choice. If you live on a walking route (usually urban areas) and therefore aren’t required to have a curbside mailbox you probably cannot have one. The curb isn’t your property and an unrequired curbside mailbox would be a violation. You can have (as I do) a curbside style box mounted at the end of your property line. I have this rather than a porch mounted one so that I can keep my front gate locked.
If you live on an all-driving route (usually suburban areas) or Rural Route (out in the country) you must have a curbside box or you ain’t gonna get your mail. All-driving route carriers do not get out except for large packages or to deliver marked mail (i.e. certified, registered etc.)
I went out and looked up and down my block, and I estimate that it would (does) take close to twice as long to cover my 'hood (all through-the-door delivery) as it would if the mail was delivered at the curb. The distance from the sidewalk to the door and back is close to the distance between the houses. I didn’t measure, although my neighbors, being used to me, wouldn’t think anything of it. 
Packages usually get left on the porch, which I like. If it looks expensive, the mail carrier comes back by at the end of his route to see if I’m home. 
I love rural America.
Somebody sent me a letter. It went to the wrong town, with the wrong zip code, and no address (just my name, the words “Rural Route”, and the town, state, and zip code). The postmaster in the other town called the postmaster in my town, and said, “Do you know who this guy is?” The letter was in my PO box the next morning.
If the FedEx driver comes to the house when it’s raining and nobody’s home, she comes in the back door (which we leave unlocked) and leaves the package inside.
Instead of the inevitable bike, this is what our mailmen use. [‘rood’ = red in Dutch, so ‘roodrunner’ is a play on words]