Mailing addresses not viewable by members?

[curtiscall]

We live in a semi-rural ward where a number of people cannot receive mail at their street addresses and have PO Boxes instead. Historically, a lot of these members have embedded their PO Box numbers in their street addresses so that other members can know how to mail things to them. For example:

POB 1234
4321 Street Address
City, State, Zip

Given that membership records can now have a separate mailing address specified, I was hoping to be able to clean up these street addresses and remove the embedded mailing information from them, but it appears that the mailing address is only visible to leadership and that only the street address is shown in the ward directory. Unfortunately, this means I need to leave the street addresses as they are because otherwise members won't be able to mail letters to those who cannot receive mail at their street address.

Has anyone discovered a more elegant solution to this problem?

Thanks

[sbradshaw]

This doesn't directly answer the question, but I would recommend using the standard wording "PO Box 1234" instead of "POB 1234" to make it clear what the first line is supposed to be.

According to this article, it is valid to include both the PO Box number and street address when sending mail, which I didn't know before:
https://smartystreets.com/articles/is-t ... et-address
So, how you have both is valid and will work if you print address labels.

What I don't know is how Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc. will handle an address with both the PO Box and street address.

[russellhltn]

Interesting topic. That link led me to USPS Publication 28 section 215 which says it's acceptable. There is disagreement between that site and the USPS site about placement of the preferred address. The site's The Policy/Procedure Disconnect makes a strong argument that the preferred address (which I'm assuming would be the PO Box) should be the top line. The don't say which zip code should be used. (In my experience, PO Boxes always have different zip codes.) Pub 28 says it should be the preferred and I'd think that would make the most sense.


MLS has had separate mailing and street addresses as long as I can remember. But as you say, the access to the mailing address is quite limited. Even if members did have access to the mailing address, I don't know of any clues they'd have that it exits and they should use that instead.

As you say, it would be interesting to see how the mapping programs handle it. Just for fun, I added a PO Box to my address (in Notepad) and pasted it into maps.google.com. It promptly did a "partial match" ignoring the PO Box. The question is how it works in Member Tools for unverified addresses.

[curtiscall]

Thanks for the feedback. I think I'll switch to using "PO Box ####" as the first line, street address as the second line, and then only including a 5 digit zip. As long as it isn't the full nine digits, it should be the same zip for PO Box or street address. (Small town).

[russellhltn]

it should be the same zip for PO Box or street address. (Small town).

You might want to verify that.

USPS Look Up a ZIP Code.

You know what they say when you assume.

[lajackson]

For members who receive mail at PO Boxes, we use the USPS Manual format of

Name
Street Address
PO Box Number
CIty State ZIP code of the PO Box

Then we tell members who mail things that they should use the whole address, or at least the PO Box line if there is one.