The Postal Service™ offers Premium Forwarding Service® (PFS), a personalized service for reshipping mail from a primary residential address (or PO box™, with certain restrictions) to a temporary address using Priority Mail® Service with USPS® Tracking Service. It is perfect for residential customers going away from home for two weeks up to one full year (52 weeks). “Snowbirds,” executives on temporary assignments, students, individuals with an extended family care situation or who are away on an extended vacation.
Benefits include:
n Customers do not miss important mail while they are away.
n A customer’s permanent address does not change, and temporary address information is never provided to senders.
n All of the customer’s mail reaches them, most of it via Priority Mail Service with USPS Tracking. In section 507.3.3, the Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®) contains more information on what mail should be reshipped immediately at no additional charge and mail not held for the weekly Priority Mail reshipments (e.g., Priority Mail Express® and Registered Mail items).
n Post Office™ weekly mailing goes out the same day (Wednesday) every week on a regular schedule that customers can depend on.
PFS is not available for the following types of addresses:
n Business addresses.
n APO, FPO, and DPO addresses.
n Single-point delivery addresses such as RV parks, hospitals, hotels, and U.S. Department of State addresses.
n Size 3, Size 4, or Size 5 PO box addresses (a customer with a Size 1 or Size 2 PO Box as the primary address is eligible for PFS, but must apply at a retail location (not online).
A customer has the option to apply for Premium Forwarding Service at their Post Office or online at http://usps.com.
Customers must pay a nonrefundable application fee and reshipment charge per week for each week of service requested. If for any reason the customer requests early termination of PFS, the Postal Service can refund weekly reshipment charges not used to the customer.
A customer who enrolls in PFS using the online application must pay the application fee by credit card upon submission of the application. The Postal Service will also use the customer’s designated credit card to process the weekly reshipment charge in a weekly recurring fashion. For a customer who enrolls in PFS using the online application, both the application fee and any weekly reshipment fee previously charged are nonrefundable, but customers can stop PFS service and future weekly reshipment charges by going online and updating their information.
Refer to Notice 123, Price List, for the application fee (sometimes referred to as the “enrollment fee”) and the weekly reshipment charge.
— Retail Services,
Retail Channel Operations, 11-28-13
