Key Takeaways
- Mail forwarding keeps your U.S. mail accessible abroad.
- Virtual mailboxes let you manage mail online.
- Mail scanning gives you digital access to mail contents.
- Choose a secure, reputable mail scanning service.
- Mail scanning can reduce international mail forwarding costs.
When you’re traveling or living abroad, the preparation can come with a lot of headaches. Do you have all of the essentials? What are you allowed to bring? And once you actually arrive the list gets longer! We are, after all, talking about moving and living abroad. It isn’t like moving down the road, crosstown, or even across the country. There are a lot of moving parts that are going on behind the scenes with this decision, and there’s going to be the inevitable headache and hassle of moving house in general combined with having to handle moving to another country completely.
How Do I Get My Mail When Not At Home?
After signing up for a mail forwarding service, any mail that’s addressed to your home will be redirected to a new address at a facility. As soon as it arrives, the outside of the envelope is scanned and uploaded to a virtual mailbox. Then, you have a few choices:
It depends; some services, like US Global Mail scan mail contents within 2-4 hours after your request but others can take up to 24 hours or more. Services that have lots of addresses and usually have mail shipped from those locations to their central location before it is scanned can take several days for scans. As a general rule, though, you can expect to have your mail scanned (mail that you choose to have scanned, that is) up and ready to rock and roll on your digital US Global Mail dashboard in just a few hours.
Again, this depends on which company you choose. Some companies are vague about their security measures and do not list them clearly on their site. It is of the utmost importance that you double verify that the mail scanning and mail forwarding service you choose to move forward with is trustworthy and reputable. While there are a lot of great companies in this industry offering fantastic services, like industry leaders US Global Mail, there are also a lot of fly-by-night operations out there that promise the moon and the stars but may not be quite as reliable or as secure as you are expecting.
Is Mail Scanning affordable?
Yes. Especially since you can read the contents of your mail ASAP and not have to ship it to yourself, wherever you are! You certainly won’t have to spend a small fortune on mail forwarding and mail scanning services from companies like US Global Mail, and won’t have to spend anywhere near as much money as you might have renting an oversized PO Box through the USPS to hold and capture all of your physical mail for months (if not longer) on end. Combine that with the fact that the USPS simply isn’t going to offer the same mail scanning or digitizing services that you get from a reliable company like US Global Mail – not to mention all of the other benefits that an organization like this offers (including check cashing, for example) – and it becomes a no-brainer the specialty services rather than go in a different direction.
Which services offer mail scanning?
We have complied a list of the popular mail forwarding services that include mail scanning here. Pick one that works best for you. Of course, we would like to recommend ourselves- US Global Mail– as the very best one out there! US Global Mail has a sterling silver reputation in the mail scanning and mail forwarding industry, a reputation built on the back of thousands of clients in the United States and worldwide taking advantage of these services on a day to day basis for a number of years.
Does USPS offer mail scanning?
Via Informed Delivery you can an email from the USPS with an image of the outside of your mail. You can digitally preview your mail and packages scheduled to arrive that day. Informed Delivery allows you to view greyscale images of the exterior, address side of letter-sized mailpieces. Images are only provided for letter-sized mailpieces that are processed through USPS’ automated equipment. So while that is convenient, you cannot read the contents of your mail. That can only be done with a mail scanning service. If you’re only looking for a scan of the envelope itself (which can sometimes be a little bit hit or miss) this may be something that you’re interested in for sure.
