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Tuesday, January 21st
North Carolina-based Traveling Mailbox has been in business since 2011. Your virtual mailbox can have an address in 50+ different locations across several different states. This service is best for travelers, expats, and small businesses who want easy access to their mail no matter where they are.
5 virtual mailbox plans to consider
Depending on how much mail you expect to receive and have scanned, you'll have five plans to choose from with Traveling Mailbox:
Fax services, integrations, and shredding are included
No matter which plan you select, you'll always get free shredding. Also, junk mail won't ever count towards your received mail total, and your virtual mailbox can easily be integrated with your Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, Box, or One Drive account. Finally, Traveling Mailbox gives you a toll-free fax number for receiving and sending faxes at no extra charge.
Pay-as-you-go services
Other services are available here for an extra fee and are listed at the bottom of the page. For example, checks can be mailed to your bank for deposit ($4.95/check plus postage), and mail can be stored past the included 30-day period ($1 per envelope per month).
We're disappointed with this service
Our impressions of Traveling Mailbox aren't very positive. First, we spotted typos throughout the whole site (like spelling "peice” wrong in one of the large headers). More importantly, this virtual mailbox provider gets disappointed reviews from clients - despite having an "A+” and accreditation from the Better Business Bureau. In one place we found customer comments, more than half gave Traveling Mailbox the lowest possible rating.
Delays in scanning
The biggest source of trouble seems to lie in the distributed nature of these virtual mailboxes: unless you choose their NC headquarters as your address, your mail will be received at the location you selected and then physically forwarded en masse to the North Carolina warehouse. That can equal huge delays of two weeks or longer: some people said that mail pieces were marked as delivered by FedEx or USPS, but Traveling Mailbox didn't have it processed and loaded to the dashboard for a long time. When a service is often described as "unreliable” or "incompetent”, you should probably leave it alone.
Use a different virtual mailbox service
We're not sure what would motivate anyone to choose a virtual mailbox that can take weeks to upload envelope images, especially when other services exist that do it on the same day - and for less money. Traveling Mailbox is our least favorite option among virtual mailbox providers, but fortunately you've got plenty of reliable, affordable rivals to choose from.
When you hear the term "virtual mailbox”, you might think it's referring to your email inbox. The concept is similar, but it relates to your real-world, physical mail and making it 100% digital. Still, many people aren't sure how exactly it all works.
First, you authorize a company to act as your agent (by submitting a notarized copy of USPS Form 1583) and select one of their available addresses. Once you've forwarded your mail or changed your address on file with your credit card company, the DMV, and anywhere else that sends it to you, the virtual mailbox company will scan the outside of everything that comes in your name. You then sign in to your dashboard, indicate what you'd like done with each piece - scan the contents, forward to your location, or shred and discard - and you're done.
There are several other services that can be included with your virtual mailbox plan. These include check depositing (by forwarding them to the bank of your choice), package inspection, mail and package forwarding, and even remote notarization of your USPS form. Be aware that some providers include such features with your monthly or annual plan, while others will charge a la carte for any extra services you use. Those can really add up, so it's smart to have an idea of what your average needs will be and choose a virtual mailbox service that won't wind up costing an arm and a leg.
Wondering why virtual mailboxes are so popular? Think about how many people are traveling without a fixed permanent address, working as digital nomads around the globe, or operating a small business out of their home and don't want prospective customers to know the address of their residence? Virtual mailboxes can be a fantastic solution in those cases. Even large corporations are taking advantage of outsourcing their brick-and-mortar mailrooms and having all inbound mail received and sorted digitally, saving their employees time by having everything routed automatically to the right person.
With more than a dozen well-known options for virtual mailboxes, you might feel overwhelmed deciding which one is right for you. It's worth taking some time to compare them carefully, because it can be costly and time-consuming to set up the service - and to cancel and reroute your mail if you don't wind up liking it. Keep in mind these factors as you evaluate several different virtual mailbox options:
Virtual mailboxes can take care of getting your mail to you no matter where you roam, and TopConsumerReviews.com has evaluated and ranked today's most popular options. We're sure this information will help you choose the right service for your needs, business or personal!
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