In many countries, there is no “door to door” delivery of post. For example, mail to street address in Namibia will be returned to sender as undeliverable. Thus renting a PO box or “Private Bag” or “Locked Bag” is the only way to receive mail in such countries. In some rural areas of the United States, Canada, and Australia, mail is not delivered so rental fees are often discounted or free.
But here in Ireland there is “door to door” delivery of post, and indeed it is actually “door to door”, even a house is in a rural area, at the end of a boreen, and has a long driveway, An Post (the USP) will drive to the door.
So who in Ireland rents a PO Box? and why?
Empirlcal data supports the view that the chief legitimate users are outsourced paper form processors. Banks and Newspapers uses these to process Credit Card applications and Mail Competitions respectively. In their fullest sense a PO BOx may be a “Contact Centre” where the outsourcing party has no daily dealings with forms at all.
I receive many unsolicited MBNA Credit Card Application forms, most classify this as Junk Mail and don’t give it a second thought. But what if it is phishing mail? What if it isin’t from a Credit Company, nad is actually from a Phisher. Such a scoundrel could extract valuable (literally) information including, but not limited to, name, address, date of birth, signature, signature, current account details, mothers maiden name (for “security reasons” ;)), signed direct debit mandate, and have a field day.
So the message of the day is do not use unsolicited credit card application forms.
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