Managing important post and correspondence

[DoubleEnder]

If you are living away permanently, on board in say the Med, or USA, how do you manage important hard copy mail? Examples would be a new or replacement credit card, or perhaps a legal contract that needs to be signed in wet ink and returned.

I guess one way is to use a trusted friend or rellie who lives in UK - do you then make that your 'official' address? But are there other ways? Does anyone use a solicitor maybe? Or are there concierge services that anyone has real experience of? Suppose you own a house/flat in UK that is rented out - does that help?

sorry if this is a duplicate question. I tried various search terms as I was pretty sure this would have come up before, but failed...Happy to be redirected.

Thank you

Graham

 

[maxi77]

Our nextdoor neighbor forwasrds our post as and when required but we do go home every few months as well.

 

[rivonia]

If you are living away permanently, on board in say the Med, or USA, how do you manage important hard copy mail? Examples would be a new or replacement credit card, or perhaps a legal contract that needs to be signed in wet ink and returned.

I guess one way is to use a trusted friend or rellie who lives in UK - do you then make that your 'official' address? But are there other ways? Does anyone use a solicitor maybe? Or are there concierge services that anyone has real experience of? Suppose you own a house/flat in UK that is rented out - does that help?

sorry if this is a duplicate question. I tried various search terms as I was pretty sure this would have come up before, but failed...Happy to be redirected.

Thank you

Graham

Hi Graham,
we like you are permanant live aboards and use the Marina address that we are staying in and when we move on let everyone know untill we have another address. We also have friends in the UK who get official mail for us and then forward it to us.

Peter

 

[NornaBiron]

We have all our mail sent to a relative and this is now our official address. Over the time that we've been away from the UK (this is our 4th winter on board in the Med) we've noticed that the amount of mail that we receive has diminished considerably. We do everything electronically if the option is there - no bank statements etc etc. If we get mail that we have to deal with it is scanned and e-mailed to us and hard copy is sent to us using a Post Restante address.

 

[little_roundtop]

We appear to live at my sister's and that is our home address for bank, credit cards and similar "legal" stuff. For most other post we use our winter marina address (we winter at the same marina every year) and they are happy to keep mail for us.

 

[PlanB]

We do the same as NormaBiron.
For banks, credit cards etc it is really important to have a permanent UK address, particularly for sending replacement cards as they will normally only send to a UK home address.
Most things are done electronically these days, but we have even done property sale paperwork without too much difficulty.
If you foresee anything really complicated, you could always set up a (specific) power of attorney.
Feel free to ask any specific questions.

 

[Madeo]

Here in France there's a great setup called 'Courrier du Voyageur' - set up by a couple of long-term cruisers who had the same prob on their voyage.

Different charges for different levels of service, from scanning your mail and putting it on the net, and forwarding as often as you want, to paying cheques into the bank, bills etc. I think they've even got a parcel reception service now...

http://www.courrier-du-voyageur.com/ (site in French and English)

 

[DoubleEnder]

thankyou

Everyone- that's very useful and prob enough for now, food for reflection etc

Graham

 

[TQA]

If you are on the US side of the pond this is a well respected service.

http://www.sbimailservice.com/mail_services.htm

 

[CharlesSwallow]

Yes, I know that Ammex claim on their ads to send a replacement card anywhere and since they are the mavericks of the finance industry, I wouldn't doubt it. However virtually every UK bank will ONLY send replacement cards and PINs to the registered address. I run a bank local branch (Biggest in the UK as it happens) as well as my own IFA business and when I lost my wallet on my recent trip to Corfu, even they wouldn't send out replacements to my marina address even though I knew the lad I was talking to at the call centre (we both knew it was against the rules, of course!). Things have tightened up recently in response to "Money-laundering activities and the general mistrust of banks so who can blame them? If you have a verifyable UK address, use it and get post forwarded to you at your expected destinations.

Price we pay for security and freedom. I live with customers groussing about it every day but...

Chas

 

[duncan99210]

My brother is our UK address. For 95% of things we use that address or email. For the odd thing (SWMBOs replacement cards when she lost her wallet), they all go to his address and then are forwarded to us at the marina during the winter or to a local address when cruising. For example, Vliho Yach Club offers this for mail; they'll hold it for you until you turn up.

It's worked well so far!

 

[KellysEye]

We used Jane's brother,who sorted out the junk mail and sent the important things. You have to write to everybody who sends you mail to give them your new holding address, we had a long list and it took ages to do. If we knew we were going to be somewhere for a month we emailed him the address of where we were staying. Bear in mind even airmail to another continent can take a long time. Also some countries don't deliver mail so you have to check if they do and if not regularly check the local Post Office if you know mail has been sent.