Apple ships via Post Office, but won't ship to P.O. Boxes

[wordmunger]

I just ordered an iLife update, and Apple says it will ship via the US Post Office. However, the Post Office doesn't deliver to my street address, only my P.O. Box.

Catch-22: Apple won't ship to P.O. Boxes.

I went to the apple store to complain, but found no email address for complaints -- you have to call them. I don't particularly want to wait around on the phone to lodge a complaint. Any suggestions? Why would Apple have such a bizarre policy?

About 50 percent of the time, the P.O. delivers incorrectly addressed materials to my P.O. box, but the other half the time, it just gets returned. Needless to say, this gets tiring after a while.

Mainly just wanted to rant.....

 

[swiftaw]

Why wont the Post Office deliver to your street address?

I believe you can put something called a mail hold on your address, which effectively means that all mail to your address is held at your local post office until you collect it. Maybe that is the solution.

 

[wordmunger]

Why wont the Post Office deliver to your street address?

Oh, don't get me started. It's because a majority here wants to live in a "cute" small town, so they voted to not have street delivery since "everyone" wants to chat with their neighbors at the P.O.

It means everyone in town gets cheaper P.O. boxes, but everyone *has* to have a P.O. box.

No, the mail hold thing won't work, since our street address is not a valid postal address. The P.O. just randomly decides whether or not to forward incorrectly-addressed mail.

 

[yg17]

Oh, don't get me started. It's because a majority here wants to live in a "cute" small town, so they voted to not have street delivery since "everyone" wants to chat with their neighbors at the P.O.

It means everyone in town gets cheaper P.O. boxes, but everyone *has* to have a P.O. box.

No, the mail hold thing won't work, since our street address is not a valid postal address. The P.O. just randomly decides whether or not to forward incorrectly-addressed mail.

And where exactly do you live so I can make sure to NEVER consider moving there?

 

[VoodooDaddy]

Ship it to me, then Ill send it to you

edit - cant they ship it fedex like everything else?

 

[wordmunger]

And where exactly do you live so I can make sure to NEVER consider moving there?

Davidson, North Carolina. I don't blame you.

Ship it to me, then Ill send it to you

Ha! You wish!

With any luck, the PO will decide to be nice about this one, and I'll have my iLife update. I suspect the reason they're shipping via the post office is because it's cheaper for small packages. That's fine, but they should at least check to see that the address they're shipping to is a valid postal address.

OTOH, I also get burned the other way -- Shippers will look up my street address in the postal database, find that it's not there, and refuse to ship, even though UPS, FedEx, and so on, are happy to deliver to the street address.

 

[CalBoy]

I went to the apple store to complain, but found no email address for complaints -- you have to call them.

Forgive my ignorace, but if you could simply drive to an Apple Store, and you knew that your address is difficult to ship to, why didn't you just go to the Apple Store and pick it up? Seems a lot easier to me.

Why would Apple have such a bizarre policy?

I can't think of the reason now, but I know it's not just Apple. Most places online will not ship to a PO box. It might have something to do with liability or something.

 

[wordmunger]

Forgive my ignorace, but if you could simply drive to an Apple Store, and you knew that your address is difficult to ship to, why didn't you just go to the Apple Store and pick it up? Seems a lot easier to me.

I've ordered a ton of stuff from Apple and there's never been a problem because it's always come via FedEx. The problem is that suddenly they decided to use that same address for a USPS delivery.

I can't think of the reason now, but I know it's not just Apple. Most places online will not ship to a PO box. It might have something to do with liability or something.

There are quite a few places that don't ship to PO boxes. However, if you ship via the Post Office, you need to make customers aware of that before you drop the item in the mail, since the PO doesn't deliver to every address, just like FedEx and UPS don't deliver to PO boxes. That's what I wanted to tell Apple, but I'm not finding them very easy to communicate with.

 

[CalBoy]

I've ordered a ton of stuff from Apple and there's never been a problem because it's always come via FedEx. The problem is that suddenly they decided to use that same address for a USPS delivery.

I see what you're getting at, but if nothing else works out (as in a dozen phone calls to Apple), then I guess you'll be stuck going to the store.

There are quite a few places that don't ship to PO boxes. However, if you ship via the Post Office, you need to make customers aware of that before you drop the item in the mail, since the PO doesn't deliver to every address, just like FedEx and UPS don't deliver to PO boxes. That's what I wanted to tell Apple, but I'm not finding them very easy to communicate with.

So they didn't tell you this when you checked out? Hmm...seems to me like you have a case of Apple changing the terms of deliver after the fact. You might be able to get them to FedEx it because they essentially changed the shipping method on you. Enough calls will get this settled (hopefully not too many).

 

[dricci]

Just give 1-800-MY-APPLE a call (web store phone number). In my experience they're pretty helpful with resolving issues such as this.

But if for whatever reason that doesn't work out, maybe you should give someone like amazon a shot.

 

[TheAnswer]

Ask the post office manager if you can have a unit # style address that would end up in your post office box. There are plenty of third party post office like stores that hand out unit # addresses (so it looks like the person has a physical address at that location) as opposed to P.O. numbers, so I don't see why the post office wouldn't do the same.