[Sam'n'Kelv]

We have a problem. Sometime during the next few weeks we need to advise schools in the UK about our NZ address in order that they can post exam results. At the moment we have no idea where we are going to be living - apart from the fact that it's going to be in Pukekohe somewhere.

Is it possible to set up a temporary POST BOX in New Zealand? Has anyone got any experience of this? The NZ Post Office website gives advice for businesses but not for individuals - as far as I can see.

Regards
Kelvin

[victoria]

HI
Yup! Hubby booked and paid for a PO BOX No. while on a reccie a couple of weeks ago. We don't have a base yet either but a fairly good idea of area so we've set up one with the post office at Param outside Wellington. Rented for a year and will give this to the Post Office in the UK for forwarding our post.You can rent different sizes but we went for small (letter size) as we don't want all the rubbish (magazines etc.) sent on. Hope this helps.
Vicky

[Sam'n'Kelv]

Thanks for that Vicky

Do you know whether it's possible to organise an NZ PO BOX in advance from the UK?

[victoria]

You're welcome.
I'm sure you cannot do this from the UK because ID needs to be shown to the post office when you book your rental Box No. Any chance of anyone already over there doing this for you using their ID on your behalf?
Vicky

[sarahw]

You know you can do poste restante for free?!! I only realised that after we'd set up a PO Box! We only used it for about 3 weeks but had to pay for a year! If I were to do it again I'd have stuff sent to my name, poste restante c/- the post office (you'll need the post office address for this). I used it when I was in Australia some time ago & it worked really well.

[sarahw]

Details on PO Box:

http://www.nzpost.co.nz/Cultures/en-NZ/Personal/ManageMailDelivery/POBoxesAndPrivateBags/

Details on Poste Restante:

http://www.nzpost.co.nz/Cultures/en-NZ/Personal/ManageMailDelivery/PosteRestante/

and the addresses you can have poste restante held at:

http://www.nzpost.co.nz/Cultures/en-NZ/Personal/ManageMailDelivery/PosteRestante/Post+Restante+Locations.htm

[Tia Maria]

I'm not sure if the rules have changed since we did it 18 months ago. But we managed to reserve a post box from the UK, we then produced ID on arriving in NZ to gain access. We did this before Christmas as we were arriving in January.

We used the PO Box address on our Royal Mail redirection, then we arrived in Christchurch in January and went to the nearest Post Office and produced ID and the reference number they gave us.

Our post box was actually in Auckland but we were travelling around first which is why we produced ID in Christchurch. Because of the timescales invoved there was post in there that had arrived before we did, but I don't know if they guarantee to do that.

We just phoned the number on the website and got put through to the Post Office we wanted, originally Devonport. However, all the Post Boxes there were taken so we got put through to the next nearest Post Office.

I was a bit unsure as we didn't receive any written confirmation but we did get a reference number and I also got the name of the person we spoke to and it all seemed to work out fine. :)

Cheers

Tia

[Pip]

Ditto to Tia, - we got someone in NZ to "reserve" one for us as I think the request to reserve has to be made in person, so then we had a PO box number and address before we left, and were able to set up mailforwarding in the UK to our PO Box (showing your ID etc at that end) before we left.

When we arrived in NZ, we took in our ID (passport) and paid the annual fee, and were then given the keys to the mail box. (this was six weeks ago). Touch wood, all the mail forwarding seems to work really well, and most of our UK post arrives about 3-4 days later - to be honest, I was expecting it to be 3-4 weeks!

Really glad we did it.. flukely, turns out that my OH office is opposite the PO where our box is, so he nips in every other day to check it, but I imagine if you end up living somewhere nowhere near your mailbox, it might be a challenge... on the other hand has been invaluable for people sending stuff to us and knowing that as we go from short term to long term accomodation, that we don't need to worry about mail not reaching us.

Good luck with it!

[Tia Maria]

Pip wrote:

Really glad we did it.. flukely, turns out that my OH office is opposite the PO where our box is, so he nips in every other day to check it, but I imagine if you end up living somewhere nowhere near your mailbox

We weren't miles from ours, but it was a pain to get our post as we couldn't get a box in our local Post Office. So we arranged for a redirection from the PO Box to the short term rental we were staying in.

Then when we moved into our permanent house we changed the address on our NZ redirection.

It all sounds a bit involved but it was quite simple and our mail always made it to us, although it normally had about 3 redirection stickers on it. :laugh

Obviously each redirect adds an extra few days to the post reaching you, so ideally you advise everyone of your NZ address ASAP. But it works while you are sorting yourself out, in our case it took about 14months, but I'm sure others are much more efficient!

Cheers

Tia

[nellyt]

We are due to arrive in ChCh at the end of June. I just phoned Bishopdale PostShop using the number on http://www.nzpost.co.nz/ and after a short wait spoke to a lady who put me through direct to a man at Bishopdale. 60 seconds later he had told me what our PO number was!
He was quite happy to keep it open until then and just turn up when we arrive and sort the paper work and payment then. Wow. We've got an address!

This contradicts what is said at
http://nzpost.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nzpost.cfg/php/enduser/prnt_adp.php?p_faqid=617&p_created=1157951296&p_sid=SJxxLLzi

We can now setup our UK Post office redirection without the fear of a void of 1-2 weeks due to the setup time with Royal Mail.

[Leccy-Lee]

Dragging an old topic sorry..

But just found this service (designed for backpackers etc, but surely would still work out):
http://www.backpackerboard.co.nz/BBShop/product.php?productid=5&cat=4&page=1

Anyone used a service such as this? I may seriously give it a whirl, espicially as i shall be a backpacker for first month or so at least!