That's because only the post office can deliver to a PO box. UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc. cannot, by law, deliver to this box. Same for individual mailboxes - no one is supposed to put things in that box except the post office.
It's stupid in a way, but unless you also want to pay the post office to hold your parcel, it's not going to happen.
This is sellers shipping USPS refusing to ship to a PO Box.
And FedEx UPS DHL all have services that end with last-mile by USPS so that's no excuse either.
World is being optimized for cities. Fuck them
I literally do not have a mailbox for my street address and nobody does in this town or most towns here
Sellers refusing is a problem. Any USPS address is capable of receiving anything sent through the postal system, so they're just being dicks, or they have no idea which method they're going to ship and need to step up their logistics game.
The others do have last-mile agreements, but that varies based on the method chosen. Sometimes that's not available to the shipper. You don't always have the option to chose that delivery method when using one of the parcel companies, they sometimes chose that themselves or you contractually agreed to have it shipped that way.
I used to live in a rural area. We had a mailbox, but it was still damn near impossible to get parcels through anyone but the post office. DHL in particular is bad - I had one end up going to an address 30 miles away from the delivery address. It, fortunately was a relative that owned a home that used to be owned by a grandparent, but still. They said they couldn't find the address even though that road has been there since the early 1800s.
I used to have a PO box too. Address was always:
P.O. Box 6000000 111 East Easy Street Mytown, Mystate, 20505
That always worked for both of them. If one complained I said "The carrier will deliver to the address that they recognize." (Usually, some just can't do their jobs.)
TL;DR - They all suck.
It's 2025! Letters got back home from soldiers in our revolutionary war that wouldn't make it today
(post is archived)