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Comment by there | Hacker News Reader

according to the story, the post office did better than any phone provider would. he moved to a new location, maybe years later, and a piece of mail still followed him to his new address. i'm sure the registry gets notified of forwarding address changes for people on their lists, so they could in theory keep up with you even if you moved a bunch of times (as long as you forwarded from at least your last address).

if you get a new phone number, your old one probably won't forward to you, and once someone else has that new number, you will never get forwarded calls. at least with a mailing address, new people can occupy that same old address but any mail to it will still forward based on your name.

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It appears to not have been the post office that "did better than any phone provider would":

  > Did you know that, when the marrow donation center finds a
  > match, they try desperately to reach the potential donor?  Even
  > if that person has moved from their dorm room long ago, even if
  > their contact information has changed, even if they’re in a
  > different state, even if 16 years have passed?  They try.  They
  > look all over for ways to reach that person.

They succeeded in sending mail to his last known address, which was his old company. He simply failed to set up forwarding from there (although he tried, it apparently didn't work) and didn't pay attention to what get sent there.

The phone equivalent would have tried his dorm and that would have been that. He never would have even known that they had tried to contact him.

Wouldn't the phone equivalent be them calling his office number and leaving a message? It seems like they looked up his name and when they found a hit, they found his office and his office address. Surely there would also have been a similar process looking up his last known phone number if they determined he no longer used whatever number he gave them?

You have to pay for mail forwarding and in case for a address that old it probably didn't really something worthwhile. But we have email addresses now.

I recently changed my address and USPS charged me $1 to file the online mail forwarding form but I believe it's free if you go the post office or mail in the form (requires stamp). They will forward all mail to the new address for 18 months. After that I believe you can get a year extension but that will probably cost you another $1.

they claim thats there to verify you are really you who is trying to change the address.

you do not have to pay for mail forwarding with the us post office. i've moved twice in the past few years and have had a bunch of mail forwarded without ever paying for anything.

I seriously doubt the post office had much to do with tracking him down. My repeated experience with the USPS is that they pay absolutely no attention to mail forwarding requests, ever. It's far more likely that someone at the matching network did some googling.

And I don't need a new phone number, that's kind of the point. I can switch providers and still keep my number. I can move to the other side of the country and keep my number. That's what I want out of the post office.

I've wanted that for years from the post office: one address, your stuff follows you wherever, you never change your "address" you just update your location with the post office. I explained the idea to my first wife in the late seventies, and she thought I was solving a non-problem.

Some mailbox companies do that for you. People (esp old folks) living in RV traveling don't have physical address, so they set up one permanent address with a mailbox company to receive all incoming mails. The mailbox company would forward them to their current location. Whenever they stop at one place extensively, they contact the mailbox company to update the mail forward to the new location.

>>My repeated experience with the USPS is that they pay absolutely no attention to mail forwarding requests, ever.

I do find this surprising as for me, forwarding requests have always worked as expected. Could be a management problem in your area.

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