Lots of sites won’t let you do anything unless you provide a street address.
Even if you are buying something and want it shipped prel post to a PO box they want the street address also. And worse, if you use a credit card the insist on two things: 1) you must supply the address where the credit card bill is sent and 2) It can’t be a PO box.
Well, my cards all send bills to the PO box. That is the point of a PO box, after all.
I naturally want a PO box for anything financial because the rural box can and is broken into regularly.
Because people want to be able to find you in case something goes wrong with the payment. It’s more difficult, but not impossible, to locate someone with a PO Box.
For example, if I am selling something to you, and I send a bill to the PO Box and you don’t pay, I want to know where you live.
Also, something I just thought of is that the PO Box number could be wrong and they want an alternate shipping address. Maybe they get a disproportionate number of PO Box errors or returns.
Also, you could close the PO Box before the shipment arrives, so they want an alternate address.
PO boxes are favored for committing fraud. A thief can get a box at a place like Mailboxes etc. without an id (or much of one) in, say, the name of the person whose credit card number they stole. Then order a bunch of stuff to get shipped there quickly. If that credit card owner doesn’t figure out quickly, then the thief takes all the loot and moves on to the next victim.
It’s Much harder if you have to get things shipped to an actual residence.
Are you sure? I too have my CC billed to my POB and it is never a problem for me. They (the merchant) ask for my address and my CC billing address. I assume this just to verify it is not a stolen card.
By “PO boxes” I’m assuming you are using that term generically. ‘Drop boxes’ like Mailboxes etc are favored for fraud not the US mail POB’s.
The reason they ask for the address where the bill is sent is for verifying the CC number. When you hand enter a CC number it will sometimes ask for a street number and/or zip code for fraud purposes. It’s not fool proof by any means. In fact even if the numbers are wrong the sale will still go through alothough some vendors will cancel the sale at that point. It’s just one more thing to help protect people from fraud.
People don’t ship to PO boxes because they’re using FedEx or UPS, which cannot deliver to them. They won’t ship by the USPS because it costs them more.
It’s very unlikely anyone would set up a PO Box for fraud these days: it puts it into the category of mail fraud. More likely, they set up a mailbox at a UPS store, which can’t get the Federal government on their tail as easily.
Yes, that is how I was using it. Was I incorrect to consider such boxes “PO boxes”? I haven’t heard them called “drop boxes” before.
‘PO Box’ stands for ‘Post Office Box’, a box that is physically located inside a US Post Office for the purpose of holding a specific person’s mail until that person comes to claim it.
I was pretty sure that’s what everyone meant by that term.
I’m sure there are many local designations. I wasn’t nit-picking your choice of what they are called only differentiating between which is the prefered method for fraud. I don’t think you can get a USPS box without giving your provable residence.
However, Wikipedia refers only to official Post Offices (run by the State) when discussing PO Boxes.
MailboxEtc calls their service ‘mailboxes’.
Like the OP, my bills and such are delivered to a “real” P.O. Box. I’ve registered my street address with my credit cards as an alternate shipping address. I’ve also registered my Mom’s address.
I’ve never had any refusals from Internet or telephone orders. Although if I’ve entered my P.O. Box as the shipping address and proceed through the screens and discovered that they only ship via UPS or FedEx I’ve had to go back and change the shipping address.
I read a book on privacy [1], and the author read the forms and publications related to getting a USPS box.
They ask for your real name and real location. They also ask for your ID. The form mentions that lying on the form is illegal under some kind of regulation, but he was unable to find the exact penalty for said regulation.
He also mentioned that he was able to go into a small-town post office and find a clerk who was uninterested in checking ID.
[1] How to be Invisible: A step-by-step guide to hiding your assets, your identity, and your life http://www.howtobeinvisible.com
Grain of salt in hand.
Don’t know what he means by small town but I have had POB in Taos, NM, Monterey, Santa Cruz and Carmel, CA and the ID check was every bit as strict as is was in Dallas, TX and Flagstaff, AZ.
Sure, you could go around the country looking for a disinterested postal worker but why not just get a MailBoxEtc box where nobody seems to care?
We don’t even have the option of mail delivery here. I run a retail store, and people just don’t understand that they can’t mail anything to our physical address. It must go to the PO Box.
That said, I’ve never had a site argue when I provide the billing address for my credit card as a PO box.
Frequently not true. I got quotes the other day for overnight shipping of a 1-1/2 pound book. UPSP was less than half the price of FedEx and UPS. In fact, for books you just can’t beat the “Media Mail” rates!
So why do people get boxes as MailBox-type places, rather than at a US post office? Is it all about convenience?
Pretty much. Some post offices sell out of PO boxes, so if you can get a mailbox at a private place, that works too.
Most private “mailbox” places tell you to use a street address, which is why they’re easier to use to commit fraud. For example:
John Q. Smith
123 Main St. #456
Anytown, PA 17000
This is box 456 at the Mailboxes Unlimited in Anytown, PA, not Smith’s own residence.
This appeals to small businesses because it looks like they have a legitimate street address, and some businesses will purposely get boxes with prestigious addresses so they can have that on their letterhead for a few bucks a month.
Robin
I remember one time I bought a board game that was produced by a local company. When we opened it it was missing some of the pieces, so I thought, “No problem, their street address & suite number is printed right here on the box. I’ll just drop by on my way home from work and pick up the extra pieces.”
Surprise! The address was a Mailboxes, Etc. office. Never did get the missing pieces.
I had this problem come up at my bank. They required proof (mainly a driver’s license) that I was at the address on my account. Of course my street address was on my license. At the time, mail to my street address would get forwarded to my PO box, but only about a week after I opened the account, USPS changed something in their software so that street addresses got rejected immediately. It took a few weeks until they got tired of having their mail returned so they just let me sign a form to have the address changed. Other than that, I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem. When businesses ask for my address, I ask if they want my street or mailing address, if they didn’t specify. Sometimes I put both.
It’s about convenience as stated above but just as importantly it’s about having a human at your mailbox to sign for letters and UPS, et al.
Business’ will ship to private postboxes.