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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

Why can't mail be delivered to your house? I'm pretty sure the USPS basically has a mandate to deliver to every home except in extreme cases. I mean, last I heard they still run a dog sled to deliver mail in some of the furthest reaches of Alaska.

I would guess that delivering to residential addresses only is the only way to ensure a limited number per household. Otherwise, you are going to have people trying to get a bunch for resale.

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Most small towns in Alaska have PO Box only service, not residential delivery.

But, it looks like the covidtests site correctly recognizes at least some of these zip codes and is allowing non-residential addresses, which is impressive.

USPS won’t deliver to my door, but they will deliver to a mailbox on a paved road about 1.5 miles away. They installed some of those locking CBU things, but not enough for everyone in the area that needs one. So I’m stuck with a non-locking mailbox.

Unfortunately, mail theft went through the roof over the past year. 90% of our packages were stolen. So, we won’t ship anything via USPS anymore and got a PO Box for things that won’t ship UPS/FedEx (which happily deliver to my door).

So you have residential mail, you just have chosen not to use it.

In the future consider not living in a rural area, but in the suburbs. I've worked as a package handler for FedEx in my past -- delivering a package to a remote location, even if 1.5 miles from a paved road sucks. If you choose to live rurally -- be prepared for the consequences such as mail delivery issues, self managed water sources, intermittent power, etc.

Just moved to a rural area 2 years ago. Will never move back to the suburbs. My water tastes better than any city water. We do shut off the well when it gets below 20 or so (a few times a year max), but it’s no big deal because we always see it coming and stock a few gallons. Mail issues have never been a problem. Our power has been more stable out here than in the city of 50k where I moved from. Gig fiber here with massive upgrade potential in the future because they ran 12 strands to my house. I only hear crickets and wind at night. Occasionally the dogs if they have to run the coyotes off. Why would I move back to the city?

Yeah, that isn't really true. There are plenty of parts of the country they don't deliver to: https://www.serviceobjects.com/blog/service-not-available-us...

All those places still have residential mail delivery, just to centralized delivery locations instead of to the door.

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