As Bay Area residents shelter in place, U.S. Postal Service officials said everyone can have their postal needs met from the comfort of their home.
Stamps can be purchased at usps.com and delivered. For residents without a computer, postal officials said residents can ask their post office or carrier to bring them a Stamps By Mail order form and again stamps will be delivered.
Packages can be shipped and picked up from a resident’s home.
Package supplies can be ordered at usps.com and delivered, and mailing labels with the appropriate postage can be printed from the usps.com website.
Package pickup is free. The carrier will deliver the mail and pick up a resident’s package or packages if the post office is told where the carrier can locate the package or packages.
The Postal Service’s free service called Informed Delivery may allow apartment residents to practice good social distancing. Informed delivery provides photos of each piece of letter-sized mail on its way. By seeing what’s about to be delivered, residents can determine how urgent it is to get the mail.
Informed Delivery is not available everywhere, but residents can find out if it is offered where they live.
After signing up, it will take about three business days to get notifications, which come by email.
14 comments
How does a person mail a package from home if they don’t know the weight?
You need to buy a scale. They have them from $20 and up at Staples or Amazon.
I like the concept, hope enough people try it to make the program stick around long enough to give it a real try.
Maybe it’s something we learn about society due to the virus.
Just signed up for my account now. Thanks claycord for posting this!
These programs are not a limited time exception to serve this crisis. They have been around for quite some time. The newest is informed delivery and that has been a few years now.
We used to be able to place our outgoing mail in our mailbox, raise the flag, and the carrier would pick it up on his delivery. Then we were advised not to do that because of mail thefts and lots of people replaced their mailboxes with models that locked. That required one to take their outgoing mail (I’m not talking about packages) to the Post Office. There are drive-thru drop off boxes in Concord and Walnut Creek that I know of, but not one for Clayton. Mail theft isn’t going to magically go away anytime soon and the time our mail is delivered is so erratic anymore that I would rather not have anything of value sitting out in the mailbox for hours. For a while there you couldn’t even be sure things you took to the Post Office made it to its destination. My PGE bill once took 20 days to get there. So, really, you can’t do it all from home, you still need to go to the Post Office.
I just put my outgoing mail in the outgoing mail slot at my apartment complex. There is a USPS-provided cluster of 12 lockable mailboxes.
Also, you should be paying your PG&E bill electronically.
YES, there is drop-off in Clayton. You can do drive-up drop-off right behind the post office or go in (even during non-business hours, doors are open) and drop off.
Signed up for Stamps.com recently and received a scale for $9.99.
Mailing packages from home for years, it is painless and cheap and saves you HOURS AND HOURS of time versus wasting a postal workers time at the counter at the post office. It is patriotic to use the online shipping as it streamlines a taxpayer funded organization.
Unfortunately, not everyone has a computer, and never will. They will have to offer services at the Post Office. In fact, Clayton now offers a nice selection of greeting cards. If you’re into stamps, you can select from a wide selection of Commemorative Issues and really delight in the beauty of the artwork on today’s stamps. If you’re into that.
Unfortunately stamps can’t give you a tracking number to ensure the package is delivered.
I use USPS for shipping from home. I keep a collection of flat rate envelopes and boxes at home. The USPS website allows me to print shipping labels, including tracking numbers. I pay for the shipment online and schedule a pickup, either from my mailbox or front porch. I add the tracking number to my informed delivery, and can track the package during the entire process.
I love being able to track my packages using USPS Informed Delivery. We placed an order from Kentucky, and it shipped on Saturday. Yesterday, it was in Nashville with an expected delivery of today. At 1:42 this morning it arrived in Buffalo, NY. I don’t think they’ll make their 8 pm delivery estimate.
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