Shipping to an APO

Recently, I read questions about shipping to APO addresses. I work in the belly of the beast of my postal facility known as Exceptions. The Exceptions section is basically the "dead letter" section of my mail plant. This is where you see the bizarre, the gross, and the extremely delayed mail. Today I caught an international express addressed to Israel that had been stuck in our plant for ten days. There are definitely some tips I can give, hopefully they help.

1) DO NOT expect any mail going to an APO get to its destination sooner than 7 days at the fastest. Express for APO mail is basically a waste, as is most signature or delivery confirmation. I spoke with a clerk who is an expert on APO mail; he says there are extra precautions and checkpoints for APO mail. ALso, shipping to a temporary APO is very tricky, so try to time the shipping right. If someone is due to change locations in about a week, I'd hold off on shipping.

2) Make sure EVERYTHING in the address is correct; the slightest error will result in your getting your expensively shipped package back. Also, you cannot use the term "any service member" anymore...used to be able to for care packages, but no more.

The following link shows the correct way to label your box:

www.usps.com/ship/apo-fpo-guidelines.htm

There were a couple interesting things I never thought about before: no shipping bulk religious items other than Islam or pork to the Middle East.

I'm not good with rates, but here is a link to the posstal calculator:

postcalc.usps.com/

I hope that helps; if there are any more questions, I'll do my best to find out if I don't already know

No alcohol in APO packages to the Middle East either.

I don't have one of these but I bet its a lot cheaper and faster than my current method which is basically a private courier with a NY drop address. It is currently taking at least 3 weeks to get to me and much of that time is delays at customs this end.

Delivery time for APO mail is also highly dependent on the work schedule of the schlubs at the end point. If your mail arrived in the middle of the week, you might get it inside of 5 days (!) if you were in Kuwait. But if it arrived Friday-Monday, it might be 7 days or more, since everyone seemed to have 4-day weekends.

Not only can you not ship alcohol, you can't ship a lot of other stuff: pornography, weapons, anything that looks like a weapon, anything that might have ever been used as a weapon in the history of mankind...the rules were much more restrictive for outgoing mail (from APO) than incoming mail (to APO). Guys literally had to get commander's approval to mail home tools for making fishing rods, and some had weapon accessories (sights, grips, etc.) that they could ship IN, but weren't allowed to ship OUT.

Well here's a long shot.

Anyone out there with an APO or BFPO address who can help an experienced gamer expat in TKWIL...please get in touch. I don't know any military here but if anyone is lurking PM me