U.S. Military PO Box Orders

[jsinger]

Many sites don't ship to Military PO boxes. Those are in the U.S. even if the ultimate recipient may be far away. I guess the problem is that one must use USPS which can be expensive under certain circumstances.

Are there other problems, like fraud, with mil box orders that I'm not aware of?

[HRoth]

You mean APO addresses? You can't get delivery confirmation, is the thing, and you often have to fill out a customs form. I do ship to them a lot, and I have not had any fraud problems, no evil eye. I mean, consider that the average military person committing mail fraud would get in a lot more trouble than Joe Civilian doing it and would lose a lot more. I think there is more deterrence in that.

[jsinger]

"you often have to fill out a customs form"

Really? I don't think we ever do that. Can anyone else confirm that. I don't want to end up in Gitmo :)

[willybfriendly]

We have never had to do a customs form. For the past few years we have run regular specials for shipments to APO addresses - with great success I might add (a product that provides a bit of functional luxury to the guy in the field).

[jsinger]

"product that provides a bit of functional luxury to the guy in the field"

I think I used to know her

[jpman]

I ship to APO addresses regularly and I dont have even to pay the sales tax on those shipments since they are considered exports. I am based in Japan.
Lots of nice guys there.

[HRoth]

I have been asked to fill out a customs form on certain APO shipments, both by people at the counter and by the stamps.com software. Not all APOs by any means. It must be a certain zip, but I have not paid much attention to that.

[T_Miller]

We ship to APO/FPOs all the time. Never had any issues at all.

We almost always have to fill out the White customs forms. The size/weight/value has something to do with the customs form (white or Green) issue, maybe the service level too. We always do Priority Mail.

I'm sure the rules are different for FCM and Parcel.

And considering how many sites refuse to ship APO/FPO, the customers are always very grateful and become repeat customers, as well as 'word of mouth" advertisers for you.

[LifeinAsia]

I've complained about companies not shipping to APO/FPO addresses for years. When I lived overseas in Asia as a military contractor and had an APO address, unless a site specifically says they won't ship to APO addresses (most likely because they only ship with UPS/Fedex), I just used the address and substituted CA (California) for the state instead of AP. I can only remember 1 time that it didn't work (and I think I eventually found that the company wouldn't ship to APO addresses, although they didn't specify it online). I'm not sure what state to use if stationed in Europe- maybe New York?

[rachel123]

We ship to APO/FPO and have never had any problems.

Sometimes we have to fill out a customs form, sometimes not.

[bwnbwn]

We always have to fill out a customs form wonder why some post offices require it and some don't.

Maybe why the USPS is in such a mess.

You actually don't ship it to the address what happens is you ship to military destination points based by ZIP that then take the package and ship it. All your really paying for is shipping to the point of delivery were the military takes over.

I myself feel it is part of my duty to ship to those guys/gals. Most of the time we don't make any money on the order due to the cost of shipping and the extra goodies we send them adds to the weight of the package. We get quite a few APO's and when they return we get re oders from them along with a nice note thanking us for our support.

[HRoth]

LifeinAsia, I think you are right about NY being the state for Europe and Middle East, from comments of customers.

[Bewenched]

There is one application that makes it so SO much easier to ship USPS.... id' name names, but it would probably be deleted. SO PM me if you want to know who we use.