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Using a Mail Handling Service/PMB to establish residency and Patriot Act complications


anothernewbie

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Our mail service also provides a physical address that can be used. We are in our 5th year full-time and have never had a problem.

 

Lots of mail services provide physical addresses, so does ours. But you are being totally naive if you think this actually disguises anything. There are databases available to mailers, including financial institutions that clearly identify all these addresses as belonging to PMBs. You may have not had any issues and you may never have any, but it doesn't mean that your physical street address is fooling anyone.

Sandie & Joel

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There may be some small differences from state to state, but in general the issue should be pretty much the same in terms of the impact of the "Patriot Act" issues. I assume from what you have said that you are presently a resident of MD and have established a mail forwarding address with one of the companies in SD? I think that you may find it helpful to read this article which was published in Escapees Magazine about domicile and is presently posted on my website. Although it was published two years ago, very little of this has changed in the time since.

 

As far as moving your banking to the location of your chosen mail service or changing your address with the current bank, there have been some problems reported with this action, but most of those have not been recently so I'd suggest that if you have not done so, visit your present bank if you plan to stay with them and discuss the address change with them. If you plan to move your banking activity to a bank in SD, then choose a bank there and contact them about what needs to be done. I know that other RV folks have moved their banking to the communities around the mail service companies and few if any have run into any problems doing so.

 

I can't recall having heard of anyone reporting any difficulties with a change in address from a credit card company in the past year of so. I'd suggest that you simply do an address change with each of them and see what happens. If you have the mail service address now, do so ASAP so that you will have time to deal with this, should there be a problem, but I'd doubt that there will be any.Investment firms have seemed to be more of a problem with the PMB address issue than have most other institutions, but that is becoming less common so my suggestion is to make the move and do not anticipate a problem unless it actually happens. Those difficulties have become far less common and you may not run into any of them.

 

Health insurance is a very different situation and that same thing is true for vehicle insurance. Insurance is written by the the companies based upon the statistical data for the particular location of the address. In addition, each state has it's own laws regulating insurance companies and they require an agent to hold a license in that state so most agents in one state can not sell insurance in another state, with exception of a few agencies that are licensed in multiple states. The multi-state license is fairly common for vehicles but much less so for health coverage. If you are not of Medicare age you will have to change health insurance coveraage and probably need a different Medicare supplemental policy if covered by Medicare. There have been many reports of difficulty finding good health insurance coverage in SD recently so it would be wise to get started looking at that issue well before you make the actual move. There have been several reports on these forums of RVers moving domicile from SD because of the poor selection of health insurance coverages since the advent of the "Affordable Care Act" was instituted. Because I do not domicile in SD, I am only able to report what I read in the health care issue but suggest that you need to check that out early.

 

In general, most of us who have gone fulltime before you have found that it pays to get the address at least 3 months before we sell the house and start making the moves to the new address at that time, just to allow time do deal with any difficulties you run into. Many, many people have done the things that you are now anticipating and most have few if any problems. I think that being aware of the possible issues is a good thing but do not attempt to deal with problems until they actually exist. There are solutions for any problem you run into, even if it means choosing a different mail service or even a different state of domicile. Even though there are problems unique to the full-time RV lifestyle, there are also advantages in that we can so easily move to a new address or even to a different state. The key is to start early and allow enough time to deal with whatever does arise.

 

Good luck! and do keep us all posted as we really do care. :D

I established my SD mailing service up in November 2014. We just sold our MD 9 days ago. Our pension has had our SD address since January 1st. We pay for a national health care plan through our pension as they either offer this or a local tri-state plan. It is more expensive but I wanted to do it right and have nothing come back and bite me in the arse down the road. The only issue has been with investment firms.

Thanks for the advice.

2015 Ram 3500 RC DRW CTD AISIN 410 rear

2016 Mobile Suites 38RSB3

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In reading all the posts on this subject, it finally came to me that, the terrorists would be the least of our government's problems if the Patriot Act all of a sudden forbid the use of mail forwarding company addresses for domicile addresses. The Boston Tea party rebellion would be nothing compared to the uprising from all the people full timing that would turn on the government :D We've been almost three years using our service, and there hasn't been the slightest hint of a problem with our banks, investment companies, or any other entity. We use Americas Mailbox, and I'm sure all the others are just as good, very professional, as they would have to be dealing with US Mail.

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I'm not naive, but many times I read over and over where people are using a PO Box or using PMB etc and wondering why they are having problems. We use a street address any time it is not just for mailing purposes. We have never volunteered the information that our address is for a mail forwarding service and have never been questioned by any investment firm, bank, credit card company etc. for any type of transaction or account we were opening. Perhaps many of the problems are the way the addresses are being used.

Pat DeJong

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I'm not naive, but many times I read over and over where people are using a PO Box or using PMB etc and wondering why they are having problems. We use a street address any time it is not just for mailing purposes. We have never volunteered the information that our address is for a mail forwarding service and have never been questioned by any investment firm, bank, credit card company etc. for any type of transaction or account we were opening. Perhaps many of the problems are the way the addresses are being used.

I first just gave the the address and said number ????. Like it was an apartment. They called me back saying that they could not use that address as it was flagged from the system,Patriot Act. Then I explained our situation and this was our domicile and our mailing address. I give as little information as possible and less there is an issue.

2015 Ram 3500 RC DRW CTD AISIN 410 rear

2016 Mobile Suites 38RSB3

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