General Delivery

What is it and how does it work?

Any one that has spent much time travelling or just away from home at the campground or cottage has most likely battled with trying to receive packages, whether an Amazon delivery, a Walmart order or any other needed delivery.

We first experienced this issue our first summer on the road, I needed a repair part for the coach, and the campground did not accept deliveries. This is very common actually, as most parks don’t want the responsibility or the annoyance of receiving and caring for other peoples items, and depending on space they are just in their way. So many have one simple rule it is just “NO DELIVERIES ACCEPTED“.

So how do you go about getting your stuff?

Well it is quite simple. It is called “General Delivery” and it works in both Canada and the United States, each have different rules but both are basically very simple to understand and work well.

Find a Post Office close to your location, I personally recommend avoiding sub-stations. Each Post Office has a zip or postal code, so with that you just fill in the address as “General Delivery”, then “the town”, then the state / province, followed by the “zip / postal” code.

Now just before you pull the trigger on the order, call the post office to confirm they will accept General Delivery package items during the time period that you need it. An example would be the Post Office in Quartzsite Arizona that will not receive General Delivery items during January (because of the quantity of boon-dockers in the area and the actual physical size of the Post Office) as they can not handle the volume of packages during that month. And call the local number not the 1-800 number, better to speak with a local as someone at corporate.

Now it is up to you to track your own package, and you need to pick it up in a timely manner, most General Delivery packages are held for 15 to 30 days, then returned to sender. Just remember there is no notification system, so put on your big boy undies and follow up on your packages for yourself!

Canada Post has just added a new feature that may work well for you, it’s called “Flexdelivery” as a Canadian citizen I was able to register for this program, depending where we are located in Canada I can pick any post office and there is a virtual PO Box set up, and the feature I like is when my package lands there is a notification sent to my phone, and an email sent. Only issue would be a vendor that may not ship to a Post Office Box, in that case your back to General Delivery process.