> It’s a miracle people can get their mail in the US (and I know a whole neighborhood on Hawaii that can’t!)
Only when you look at it as sending to a person. Really what you do is send it to an address the post office doesn't get a damn what you put above the street address, they just deliver it to the specified location.
Never tried that or had something sent to me that way. Seems like it'd succeed or fail randomly based on the local post office when doing the sortation to individual house bundles.
Yeah, that's how a post office has to operate under those circumstances. It seems to work decently, for the most part.
In my country (Sweden), the post office is able to forward mail to your new address after you move, because they can look up your address in the public registry. (Of course, they charge a fee for this but it's quite small.)
They can and do do that in the US but only for a limited time and you have to tell them your old address and new address. It's essentially a bridge for you to update everyone who might only rarely send you mail. I still get mail for the previous owner more than 4 years after buying my house. (This is confirmed by sending a postcard you either enter a code to complete the redirect or send back in I can't remember exactly I've done it twice in my whole life.)
Only when you look at it as sending to a person. Really what you do is send it to an address the post office doesn't get a damn what you put above the street address, they just deliver it to the specified location.