Time for a new mailbox.

[Rick Potter]

The mail thieves finally hit my house. My daughter gets a lot of checks in the mail for her dyslexia tutoring business. This week, several parents reported that their checks to her had been washed, and changed to a new recipient. About $1500 worth of checks, from different people are involved so far.

Obviously, our mailbox was raided.

Time for a new lockable box. Any ideas? We don't really want it to look like a steel vault, and we do get a lot of mail including large magazines.

[Dwayne Watt]

I would suggest moving to electronic payment rather than paper checks. Setup an account with Square or through your bank to be able to take credit/debit cards. Alternately, or in addition, use one of the payment services Paypal, Venmo, etc. There is a cost associated but paper checks just cost someone $1500 or more.
Same thing with recurring bills...move to electronic invoicing/payment so the mailbox thieves cannot easily gain your account informations.
This is in addition to a locking mailbox. Thieves already know how to open those.

[Edward Weber]

Sorry to hear that.
I have a locking box, not a bank vault but it does help from what I'm told. The thieves will always go for an easier target.
I've seen them starting at about $110-$120

[Jim Becker]

Either encourage clients to pay via non-check means (CC/DC) electronically or have her consider a box at the local UPS Store or similar or the US Post Office to get the business mail. Yea, you gotta go get it, but it's a lot more secure. Locking mailboxes on the street or house do make it more complicated for the postal worker to deliver mail, unfortunately.

[Lisa Starr]

My husband's business requires us to receive checks, often for a substantial amount. Due to that fact, as well as convenience, we have a PO Box. With the mail safely at the post office, we don't worry if we'll be gone for a couple of days. We still file a mail hold if we'll be gone longer.

[George Bokros]

Are you sure they were stolen from your box and not somewhere along the way like where they were mailed from?

[Jim Becker]

Are you sure they were stolen from your box and not somewhere along the way like where they were mailed from?
Given checks from multiple customers to the same business were involved in the theft/alteration, it does indeed seem like the delivery mailbox was the target location unless it was the USPS carrier which while possible, is less likely.

[Myk Rian]

Sorry to hear that.
I have a locking box, not a bank vault but it does help from what I'm told. The thieves will always go for an easier target.
I've seen them starting at about $110-$120

Do you have a brand name, or website where you got it?

[Edward Weber]

https://www.architecturalmailboxes.com/
They also sell them through Amazon

[Lee Schierer]

The blue box store carries several different locking mail boxes. Our church had the same problem, so we replaced the old mail box with one that locked. So far no more problems.
495020495021

[Myk Rian]

https://www.architecturalmailboxes.com/
They also sell them through Amazon

They don't lock, but we bought 2 of these. First one got run over and dragged down the street, It survived quite nicely, but we replaced it anyway.

https://www.architecturalmailboxes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/MB801B-04_Hero-500x500.jpg

Those locking boxes look pretty tough.

[Edward Weber]

They're pretty heavily built.
I had a trash truck back into mine and I was able to repair it with some body hammers and dollies, rather that just tossing it.

[Michael Weber]

Mail slot?

[Brian Elfert]

Mail carriers aren't going to deliver to a mail slot unless your house is already on a walking mail route. The USPS certainly has no desire to add any more walking routes. Heck, they don't even want new developments to have mailboxes at each house. New developments are usually required to have community mailboxes now.

[Jack Frederick]

We had a rash of thefts from our row of about a dozen mb’s. Discussion with the rural carrier on the route led to us requesting from the post office a locking box. There is one above and below us on the road. We had a change of carriers and the whole thing died. Last week my neighbor spoke with the PO and they said the box had been waiting for someone to pick it up and install it. They are providing the lock box, but not the install, which must be to their specs. I’m moving next week so I’m out of the install crew.

[Thomas McCurnin]

We have two RF gate door bells. When the gate is opened, the two halves separate, and a ding dong is heard in the home. When the mail box is opened, another ding dong is heard in the house. These RF alarms are about $30.

The dogs go wild when they go off, a third alarm.

[Kev Williams]

I have a mailbox like the square-ish second one in the pic above, it's in the pic below... Actually got it to keep my dad from stealing the mail when frontal lobe dementia got the best of him :(

--Works great, but the mailman can't PICK UP mail from it because it's locked- so we have a second large normal mailbox next to it, for outgoing mail pickup and large-stuff deliveries...

--below, a security-cam still-shot of the thieves who stole 2 outgoing checks from our big box.
They succeeded in morphing one of our checks with a check stolen from someone else, made it out for $998 and Walmart cashed the thing :mad:
--The bank DID refund our money however...
495102

That was a couple years ago, since then I've never written another check to pay a bill. All bills on autopay ever since...

[Keith Outten]

I read an article recently that suggests you use gel ink to write checks because gel ink cannot be washed from checks.

[John Stankus]

The mail thieves finally hit my house. My daughter gets a lot of checks in the mail for her dyslexia tutoring business. This week, several parents reported that their checks to her had been washed, and changed to a new recipient. About $1500 worth of checks, from different people are involved so far.

Obviously, our mailbox was raided.

Time for a new lockable box. Any ideas? We don't really want it to look like a steel vault, and we do get a lot of mail including large magazines.

When a COVID night shift nurse creamed our limestone block mailbox coming home one morning from multiple shifts two summers ago, we replaced it with a mailcase locking mailbox. It has done well for us so far.


https://www.mailcase.com/

It is more secure than a traditional open mailbox, but as with anything it depends on how much motivation someone has as to how secure it would be.

John

[Rick Potter]

Well, our locking, parcel sized mailbox arrived from Amazon yesterday and I am about to cut up the plastic mailbox housing at the curb to see if it will hold the weight (about 25#).

You can really go down a rabbit hole trying to determine which box serves individual needs. I watched you tube vids on installing, how strong they are, and how easy it is for a determined man with a baseball bat and a screwdriver can get into any of them.

In the end, my conclusion was that any of them will stop the criminals who just walk down the street, opening mail boxes, and cherry picking any interesting mail. Since nothing short of welded steel boxes will stop a determined crook, any locking box will fit our needs.

In the meantime, while I was contemplating, my resident daughter who lost the checks ordered the box she thought was the best size, a large square one that small parcels would fit it from Architectual Mailboxes.

Gotta get to work on it.

[Jim Becker]

Rick, I went with a much larger "parcel capable" box both at the old property and here at the new one. Here, it's looking way out of proportion because it's just on a simple 3.5" square (rotting) post, but I'll be rectifying that soon. I like the large boxes given just how much stuff gets delivered here and more often than not, the smaller parcels are coming via the post office with "economy" shipping.

[roger wiegand]

I'd suggest PayPal and Venmo as a first choice, followed by a PO Box. I can't see the end of paper checks soon enough; as treasurer of a small club I find them to be a constant PITA. In my private life I've gotten it down to 1-2 a month.

[Brian Elfert]

I'd suggest PayPal and Venmo as a first choice, followed by a PO Box. I can't see the end of paper checks soon enough; as treasurer of a small club I find them to be a constant PITA. In my private life I've gotten it down to 1-2 a month.

I am the treasurer of a Boy Scout troop. A lot of parents pay by check because of the cost of Paypal. Our website takes Paypal and automatically credits the payment to the youth's account, but we also charge the Paypal fee to the payor. We decided it isn't fair that those that pay by check have to pay more to cover Paypal fees.

[roger wiegand]

I am the treasurer of a Boy Scout troop. A lot of parents pay by check because of the cost of Paypal. Our website takes Paypal and automatically credits the payment to the youth's account, but we also charge the Paypal fee to the payor. We decided it isn't fair that those that pay by check have to pay more to cover Paypal fees.

We're a 501c3 so the fees are pretty cheap. I just pay them myself because it's worth it to me to save the time and effort it takes to process the checks. I can do 100 electronic transactions in about 30 seconds, the remaining 20 checks take at least 20 minutes, and then there's the guy who mails me postal money orders that require a trip to the post office to cash (neither ATMs nor electronic deposits will take them, don't know about a cashier at the bank, their closest office is 300 miles away) and then do a paypal to myself to get the cash into a form that I can easily send to our bank. I've been thinking about giving him a free membership.

I invite people to add the 36 cents or whatever it is to their dues payment to cover the paypal fee because it makes some people feel better, about half do so. It's much less than the cost of a stamp and envelope to send the check by mail, so a good deal for everyone