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Comment by clamprecht | Hacker News Reader

Do you have any financial accounts (such as Fidelity in the US) set up using this address? How do you handle situations when their "compliance" department says "we have flagged your address as being a mailbox-type-service" and demand a physical address? Do you just give your physical address instead?

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As this has not (yet?) happened to me, I cannot really tell you how I handle the situation: I presume I would give them a physical address instead and keep them as one of the few people who know where I live. As it stands, my health insurance provider knows where I live because they truly care (premiums are different in different locations). I believe I remember my bank actually putting my ECM address down as my physical residence because that was the address on my drivers license.

To be clear: I have no issue telling people my physical address; I'm not trying to hide from people ;P. I just don't want to have to think about updating addresses ever, and I really don't want to receive mail at my physical address. Most providers that do ask for physical addresses also ask for a mailing address, and almost no one mails to the wrong address. I don't mind having my physical address with my bank, as long as they aren't sending me critical mail here.

In fact, I think about physical mail so infrequently I seriously just don't check it at this point. It seriously just occurred to me that I haven't checked my physical mail in a very long time (well over a month). Let's go check it! ;P (I actually got a little concerned that I'd fail to find my mail key, but thankfully I found it without issue.) BTW: I'm pretty certain my local mail carrier hates bulk mail so much that he just refuses to deliver it to my address now.

    1 piece of mail for someone who doesn't live here
    3 cable service bills (autobilled, waste of paper)
    2 heath insurance bills (I pay these online already)
    1 power bill (keep forgetting to autobill... :()
    1 rental insurance bill (I guess, didn't open it)
    2 lawyer bills (they also e-mail these: *sigh*)
    1 notice from AT&T of their new privacy policy

So far, none of this is mail that I care about: in fact, most of it is mail I wish I could "paperless". I can check these a few times a year and it wouldn't cause me a problem, and it is difficult or impossible for me to not tell them when I move anyway (utilities, insurance, lawyer). No financial data goes to my apartment: as I had said before, I don't even think my bank has my physical address on file anymore, but even if they did I long-ago set them to paperless for my personal banking statements so it doesn't matter.

I also received:

Google Wallet card -- I asked them to send this to me a few days ago, gave them my apartment address as I wanted to get it sooner. I did guess it would arrive in an envelope like this, but it could also have arrived in a package. I also only ordered it "for fun" and so promptly forgot it would arrive here: receiving this in another few months would not be an issue.

Trademark Scams -- I have some things that are trademarked; occasionally, I get official-looking mail that tries to convince me to pay large quantities of money to random companies to "complete" or "secure" my trademark. In this case, I received two messages requesting EUR 970 to get listed in the database ipts-register.com. Fine print: "The registration on our database has not any connection with an official government organization."

So yeah: I don't use physical mail anymore :/.

I use my VirtualPostMail address for just about everything (except the DMV, homeowners/auto insurance, and voter registration) and haven't had any problems so far. Now that I think about it, my health insurance doesn't know my real address. I should probably fix that...

It does help that my virtual address is in the same state as my real address, so things that depend on states work correctly. Without that, I'd probably have to give my real address to more places and encounter more confusion.

The most annoying thing in general is having to fill in separate billing and shipping addresses whenever I buy something online, because of course my billing address is the virtual address. I've had a couple of stores require a phone call to complete an order with separate billing/shipping addresses.

I've been using a similar service (at USABox.com) since 2006 or so; I forward the US mail I haven't discarded to France when I need it, usually once every couple of months. This was the cheapest option for what I wanted to do, when I chose them... there were already several other options at the time.

No problems with the post office or anyone else.

I admit I don't understand why Outbox didn't fall back to this model rather than shutting down (though obviously it's more of a hassle for customers switching all mail to them); though admittedly they would have competitors.

I also use a service like this on all my bank accounts (4 different bank accounts in the US), companies etc. I do not hide the fact that it is a post box with the bank, I just tell them this fact, so I don't see any issue with this. All the mail is scanned and then forwarded to another location or trashed, whatever I prefer.

I think receiving physical mail is insane.

I do all of this for my US businesses, and it's essential to do it this way as I don't live in the US so I would never be there to collect the mail in any case!

In any case there are lots of alternatives to outbox!

I've been using an ECM competitor[1] for about 3 years and, like saurik, I've not run into this problem with either my banks or the IRS. The USPS does provide that data, but to my knowledge it doesn't come as part of the standard address verification APIs.

1. http://www.virtualpostmail.com

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