How to Stop Delivery of Mail Permanently

Are you dissolving or closing your business, moving it to another location or planning to stop mail delivery to a particular address permanently for some other reason? It's not necessarily going to happen overnight, if at all, at least probably not without a forwarding address. Consider the reason that you need to stop mail delivery to your current address to understand your options.

When you decide to shut your business's doors for good, its mail service remains in play for valid reasons. For example, as you begin taking steps to close your business, there are still transactions that will take place over the course of an unknown period, such as filing an annual tax return for the final year in operation. The paperwork related to any such transaction has to have somewhere valid to go.

If a business owner dies, the executor handles urgent matters related to the company. Mail delivery remains active until the business changes hands or has been completely dissolved, however, a forwarding address may still be required.

If you plan to relocate your business permanently, you must report the change of address to the United States Postal Service (USPS). You can update your business address on the USPS website or in person at your local post office. The USPS will reroute all mail from your current post office box or street address to the new address for up to a year, giving you time to notify important departments and agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service, and your city and county, of your move. The pertinent details of your address change are kept on file with the National Change of Address database for four years.

Let's say you receive some of your business mail at your company's street address and some at one or more post office boxes. To run the business more efficiently, you might prefer to have all your business mail directed to just one address, such as your store or office's brick-and-mortar location. In this case, you can register for Premium Forwarding Service Commercial. With this service, all of your mail is gathered and packaged together, and then sent to an alternate address that works for you.

If you only need to stop the delivery of a letter sent to a business acquaintance or a package shipped to a customer, for instance, you may be able do so using the USPS Intercept service. You must register for the service and pay a fee, but it's a handy way to head off a cancelled order and have it returned to you or have a mail piece that was sent to the wrong address rerouted to the correct one.