What is Informed Delivery from USPS?

Informed Delivery is one of the US Postal Service's best kept secrets, allowing you to track packages and preview your mail in digital format
informed delivery
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Informed Delivery is a digital email service that the United States Postal Service provides. It allows users to track their packages and preview their letter-sized mail in a digital format before it actually arrives in their mailbox. Simply put, it’s a way of receiving your physical mail inside your email inbox before your physical mail actually arrives.

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Why You Should Sign Up for Informed Delivery

Sometimes it’s easy to fall behind on collecting your mail…especially now that everything is digital. When you can preview letters in your email, you’ll know exactly what’s coming your way before it ends up in your mailbox. This will allow you to better anticipate the important stuff, such as checks, money orders, bills, tax papers, and other documents of the sort. Signing up for informed delivery also allows you to track your packages! The best part is that when you sign up, you’ll receive notifications on any tablet, smartphone, or computer. Oh, and did we mention that signing up is free?

Informed Delivery Lets You See What USPS Mail and Packages are Coming Before They Arrive

Being able to see what mail and parcels are coming—and when—is a useful tool. It especially comes in handy when you’re expecting things like time-sensitive documents, prescription medicine, checks, or bills (yuck).

If you want the ability to see what USPS mail and packages are on the way to you, all you need to do is sign up for Informed Delivery. It’s totally free, and in our opinion, you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a shot.

When you sign up, you’ll get emails from USPS which contain images of the front of all letter-sized mail headed in your direction.

Does Informed Delivery Catch Everything?

Keep in mind that Informed Delivery doesn’t notify you for every piece of mail that’s coming your way. It only applies to letter-size mail that USPS processes through their automated sorting equipment, as well as packages. You won’t be able to see certain pieces of mail like catalogs or magazines, since these don’t move through the automated USPS equipment. As a result, the Postal Service doesn’t create digital images of those.

Potential customers should also note that Informed Delivery is only available for residential addresses in most ZIP codes across the country, and not for businesses.

How You Can Sign Up For Free

Signing up for Informed Delivery is a quick and easy process. We’ve laid out the steps you’ll need to take below:

  • Visit USPS’ page to enroll
  • Create a USPS account
    • Enter your address information
    • Create a username and password, and answer your security questions
  • Verify your identity
    • You can choose between verifying your identity online, or entering a verification code that you’ll get via First Class Mail

That’s it—you’re done! If you verified your identity online, you can start keeping up with informed delivery right away. If you opted to enter a verification code, you’ll have to wait a few days until it arrives in the mail.

Keeping Up With Informed Delivery

Informed Delivery will send you notifications and emails, so it’s quite easy to keep up with. You can also sign into your account anytime on the Postal Service website. Since we’re all on our smartphones all the time, we recommend downloading the USPS Mobile app on the App Store or on Google Play.

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2 Comments

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  1. Mark Kintzell

    So what, in the final analysis, does informed delivery accomplish???

    It informs you that your mail might be coming. It shows you the mail that they’ve managed to take a picture of which means the local distribution center but it doesn’t mean it’s not actually coming. No, once it reaches your local distribution center it means it has five to seven more days to reach you.

    By its own admission informed delivery doesn’t tell you every piece of mail that’s coming. Some mark it misses, some it doesn’t manage to get a picture of at all.

    In the final analysis, it tells you some mail might be coming and some mail might not be coming and they can’t guarantee when.

    I didn’t need to check the form delivery to find all this out…….. I can wake up every day and tell myself some mail might be here and some male might not be here.

    Sign up for informed delivery if you want to!

    Reply  
  2. Parviz samiei

    Please deliver my package in front of my apartment

    Reply  

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