Mail forwarding....

[Pip]

is a wonderful thing!

Just in case this helps anyone who hasn't yet left the UK, thought I'd write a quick post on it...

Before we left the UK, we managed to get a PO Box in Christchurch reserved for us (there are some previous threads on this if people are wondering how).

Then while still in the UK, we set up for all our UK mail to be forwarded to the PO Box in Christchurch. This has actually turned out to be amazing value, as not only do we get all our UK mail pretty promptly, but we also worked out that rather than ordering OH's top gear magazine subscription as an international sub (£80 versus £33 for UK), we just renewed it to our UK address and now it gets forwarded automatically along with everything else - first one arrived today.

We've also discovered that anything that we order by amazon, for delivery to our UK address, that is sent out via Royal Mail, is also forwarded out here - all at no extra cost to us!

All of a sudden the cost of Royal Mail international mail forwarding seems a bit of a bargain!

[olivia]

Hi Pip,

It was great to see your lovely new home the other day and catch up.

We also use the royal mail forwarding service. It is working fine for us now but when we initially set it up we were having mail sent out to steve's bosses address in charing cross/darfield and because it was a rural address the nz post office sent all of our mail straight back to the uk so we didn't receive anything for a few months. We didn't realise until the bank sent us an online message asking where we were!

It's all been sorted out now and the stuff comes through to our house in rangiora now with no problems but it was a bit of a nightmare to start with so if anyone decides to use the redirection service it's probably best to use a po box (and you can always set up a redirection from the po box here to your address in new zealand once you are settled).
And the stupid thing is we also had a po box in hereford street booked for us and decided not to use it for the redirected post before we left because i didn't pay for it until we arrived- so now we have to check it every few weeks just to throw out all the rotten junk mail that gets put in it (yes i was kicking myself when we didn't get our post!)

Olivia x

[incredible hulse]

Just a word of warning; we've had mail redirection in place for the 16months we've been here now to our PO Box in Welly, and for most of the time it appears to be working fine. We've had a few reports of things being posted to us though that haven't turned up though (still waiting for a video of the football to come through since March!), and recently had someone having mail returned back to them in the UK saying we didn't live at that address. I wouldn't personally rely on it for anything to valuable after recent experiences

[StevieD]

It is only for letter post too, although we do tend to get some large magazines and trade papers sent to us.

Wonder if I order a few bulkier items it will send them on too? Anyone got experience of things they have sent??

[Tanya]

We kept our magazine subscriptions going for the 2 years you can have your post redirected from the UK. It was great. I also ordered a lot from Ebay (cd's dvds, books,printer cartridges(!)) etc and only had to pay UK postage. Nothing ever got lost. People posted kids xmas and birthday presents that way also - so long as it is via royal mail and not parcel force you are fine(Parcel force is not included in the redirection)

Tanya

[Leccy-Lee]

Hmm i realise there are topics here on PO Boxs already, but using the search function i cant seem to find them?

Would be interested in getting myself a PO box for forwarding also..

[Tanya]

http://www.enz.org/forum/showthread....ail+forwarding


Tanya

[Leccy-Lee]

Thanks, i was typing "po box" into search box! Doh...

[Tanya]

Tanya

[Leccy-Lee]

Just posted this in previous topic, but this looks promising...

http://www.backpackerboard.co.nz/BBS...5&cat=4&page=1