Does anyone have experience/advice for free alternative shipping address options during longer sits?
For Context:
Would you ever ask home owner if you can have an online order shipped to their address?
Depends on what country you’re in and where you are trying to make purchases from. We had a 9 day sit in New Mexico, US and used Amazon and shipped to an off site amazon location (Amazon offered 2 options where we were staying - a CVS and a UPS Store). I did not want to ask the homeowner to use their home addy for shipping.
Yes, and there has never been any problem. Just make sure you address it care of the host’s name. You can also have your parcel shipped to a pickup point – simply select one from a drop-down list – in which case there is no need to involve your host at all.
Yes. I sit in the US. I ask HOs if I can have things shipped to their homes all the time. No one has ever said no. Beware if you are ordering things from Amazon, sometimes Amazon hands off shipping to USPS. If the HOs have their mail on hold your deliveries won’t come to the house. But you can go to the local post office to pick them up. You can also have things shipped to any post office by general delivery.
Just ask the HO. If they say no, then use general delivery. Or with Amazon you can have things sent to a locker.
Just ask the HO. For shorter sits we hold mail but if you wanted to order stuff we would cancel it. Of course we have a normal mailbox so I assume you mean just getting regular mail and Amazon deliveries.
@carmcharm7 Just ask the HO.
We often order things on sits, especially from Amazon. We always ask the HO if its OK to use their address and all have been absolutely OK with that. Sometimes they suggest writing our name c/o their name as extra reassurance, and in rural areas of Spain HOs have said delivery is very unreliable so better to use a local pick up point. We’ve ordered stuff in Australia, France, Spain, UK, basically anywhere we stay long enough to receive mail.
Thank you all for the advice/tips 
Never knew about USPS general delivery- will definitely try this out.
I will definitely keep the Amazon tips in mind, but I am mostly needing to purchase things that are not available on Amazon
Having mail order deliveries to a sitter is not a problem and requires no permission from us as hosts. I’ve been surprised when we have been asked. It’s nice but the answer is always yes so no big deal either way.
We’re in the UK and sit full time, so just something to bear in mind, but we always plan ahead for both when and which owners we ask if it’s okay to have a parcel delivered, so that we make it on return sits. But 95% of the time, we use Amazon collection points or local post offices to collect courier packages if possible, and if a certain retailer doesn’t deliver to those type of places, we simply buy from a different shop that does usually.
We always get our parcels delivered to the home we are staying in and would never feel the need to ask permission.
Why would we?