International Mail to the US Made Simple
International Mail is Easy with Postalocity
Sending important documents internationally can be slow, expensive, and difficult to track. If you just want to send a note or well wishes to a friend or loved one, it’s easy enough to move that online – to email, messages, or social media and know that your message hasn’t got lost or the information isn’t dated.
But there are many circumstances where you need to send physical documents to meet legal requirements. Furthermore, you may need to have a documented paper trail that will hold up in court that shows paperwork was sent and signed for. Whether you’re mailing immigration paperwork, legal documents, university transcripts, tax forms, or medical records, delays and lack of documentation can create serious problems and cause unnecessary stress.
Traditional international mail may take weeks to arrive and often passes through multiple postal systems and customs checkpoints — increasing the chances of delays or lost mail.
Postalocity simplifies the process:
- Upload documents online.
- Postalocity prints and mails them within the United States.
- USPS delivers them domestically.
That means faster delivery, lower costs, and better tracking – and it’s available without monthly fees, so you pay for your mailings, not for a subscription.
Create your account now or read on to learn about the benefits of sending international mail to the US through Postalocity.
Your mail is only being routed through a single mail system
When you upload documents through Postalocity to be delivered in the United States those documents are printed in the United States and their mailing origin is the United States Postal Service.
You don’t have to worry about
- Mail successfully making its way through your own national postal service.
- Mail clearing customs.
- Mail being routed correctly to the United State Postal Service from your own postal service.
By using Postalocity, you eliminate half the mailing process by originating your document in the US. This means you also reduce opportunities for your international mail to get lost, delayed, or routed incorrectly.
Your mail gets delivered much more quickly
By originating your international mail destined for the US within the country you halve the time it takes your mail to get from origin to destination. If an ideal amount of time for a piece of mail to make its way through a national postal service is 3-5 days, you can reduce the delivery time on your mail from 2-4 weeks in countries with reliable postal service down to 3-5 days by sending your mail directly through Postalocity.
Delivery time savings may be even greater in countries with less reliable postal systems by eliminating routing through an additional postal system and customs.
Accountability with certified mail
It’s almost impossible to reliably track mail that’s sent internationally because it’s changing hands between not only different postal systems, but also different countries. This makes things challenging because a lot of the mail sent internationally are documents where having a paper trail is especially important and is sometimes required for legal purposes.
When your ability to work is dependent on having visa paperwork, or your ability to attend school is dependent on a university having your transcript, or you need a hospital to have a copy of your medical records before you undergo a procedure, it’s important to be able to demonstrate due diligence that the paperwork was sent, and be able to track its status through to delivery.
Adding certified mail to your mailing is as easy as clicking a button when you upload your documents through Postalocity, instead of multiple rounds of paperwork to maintain tracking and documentation through several postal services and customs.
Certified mail is an added cost to just sending mail First Class, the standard mailing class in the United States, but it provides:
- Legally admissible documentation that your mailing was sent.
- USPS tracking that allows you to see the status of your mail.
- Optional signature confirmation – ensuring you know it was received.
When you send certified mail, you’ll receive your tracking data via email, or you can track it within your Postalocity account. The extra cost is often worth the peace of mind you’ll have even if you don’t need the documentation for legal purposes. Adding it in Postalocity may still end up costing you less than sending your mailing through your local post office – without any tracking.
Deliverability with address verification
There are often multiple people coordinating the sending and delivery of international mail. Someone in the States may be having a relative back home send something on their behalf to a third-party destination. Sometimes language can be a barrier to sending to the correct mailing address, especially with street and city names. It can also be incredibly easy to transpose numbers when you’re reading off a street address to someone over the phone, especially if you’re distracted. There are multiple possibilities for why an incorrect address could be provided.
We do an address verification check against the Postal Service’s NCOA and CASS databases for mail sent through Postalocity. These databases contain the most current mailing information possible to ensure that you’re sending your mail to the right person or place, at their most current address, before it enters the USPS mail system.
Verification is free and reduces delays in getting your mail to its destination, reducing the chance of returned mail caused by address errors.
Lower mailing costs
By sending your mail to US recipients through Postalocity you’re eliminating all the costs associated with sending international mail because you’re actually mailing from within the US Postal Service. You avoid paying international mail charges connected to sending it through your own national postal service, and any costs associated with your mail being cleared through customs.
Your international mail can be sent at the same price as First Class mail within the United States, but we strongly recommend taking advantage of Certified Mail for a few extra dollars if you have sensitive documents that you need to track and get proof of delivery for.
