Is there a legit OPSEC reason for vendors NOT to ship to P.O boxes?

I mean I'm struggling to find a reason why its any more sketchy then sending it to a street adress. It just doesn't make sense to me, could anyone shed some light on the subject?


Comments


[12 Points] drimilr:

PO boxes aren't sketch at all. I prefer them in fact. My mail is available at 8am instead of waiting on the mail person (who is really fantastic) who doesn't get here till 2 or later.

Also I don't have to worry about snooping neighbors or other people with sticky fingers.


[5 Points] weirdQthrowaway:

For customers it could potentially reduce plausible deniability (which may or may not actually be useful in court, reports are conflicting). Maybe vendors are paranoid about their customers getting popped with with a package with their name, ZIP and (presumably non-public) PO box number and and offering a postal source city or something to get out of it? This seems unlikely and something most vendors should be thinking about anyway.

The only thing I can think of that's plausible for vendors is the risk if they have poor packaging and it starts to smell if it gets left there for a day or two (if the post office has drug dogs it'd be a good strategy to check the back of PO boxes at least by walking them past them a few times a day (probably there's at least some downtime for them to fill - if people are only multi vac sealing drugs that dogs are trained to sniff out they'll pick up the scent eventually - I've seen detection times from 15 minutes to 4 days given depending on the plastic and how pessimistic/optimistic the criminal entrepreneur in question is). If people use bad stealth (which even makes it that far), the customer doesn't pick up promptly and there's drug dogs in your local post office on the off chance of finding something - a PO box would fuck you over where normal post wouldn't - but this has to be rare enough and knowing how to pack and ship without contamination, using MBB and no strong indications of the source isn't difficult or expensive to get set up for. Also, surely not this many vendors advertise their poor stealth, that would be plumbing new depths.

A final conspiracy-fuelled thought is maybe large scale vendors (the guys who supply the guys selling grams of MDMA or 2C-B or whatever) use PO boxes more than imagined - if you were transferring drugs a certain way you'd want to make sure that as little as possible of the other mail there was drugs so the customs or inspectors don't start applying more interest to PO box mail (much of which is for shit like businesses and clubs and amateur orgs and normal people who get a lot of post (who don't want the public knowing their proper address (or for loads of mail order places, their home address), or just aren't big enough to have a permanent address, or whatever - so maybe the higher legitimacy of PO box mail is enough to make inspectors less worried about inspecting it thoroughly? I'm guessing and rambling here.) - if a certain proportion of vendors are told by their suppliers (who may well know they vend) "don't ship to PO boxes" there's a reasonable chance that they'd listen (not going to bite the hand that feeds you if it's a manageable enough request like that) and put it up there in their rules. So 0.1% of home delivered mail remains sketchy (small amounts, not always good stealth), only 0.01% of PO box mail is (with excellent stealth and large amounts) [numbers obv. made up and almost certainly nowhere near that disparity] and inspectors continue to focus on delivered mail for drug investigation.

^ This is beyond unlikely, especially seeing as if someone is buying a kilo of MDMA or whatever from you you can probably afford to send a human to bring it to them if they're within a few hundred miles of you.


[4 Points] AndThenHeSays4:

The answer is no. Vendors that don't ship to PO Boxes gain nothing and lose potential customers IMHO. There is literally ZERO reason for all this paranoia around shipping to PO Boxes. That is unless you think only pigs use PO Boxes but I use a PO Box and I'm not a pig :P


[3 Points] procowtipper:

There's only two real reasons I can think of. First, there is the whole renewal thing where you might not renew it on time, and have that bitch returned to sender which is good for no one. The second is that if you happen to leave it there a long time it may start smelling if they don't have enough layers. Once again, it's bad for both parties but far worse for the consumer.


[2 Points] East420Beach:

Not sure what you're ordering, but i just ordered some weed from a vendor that actually prefers p.o. boxes. May just depend on the vendor.


[2 Points] GrandWizardsLair:

The Grand Wizard has no problem mailing to PO boxes or private mailboxes. There are many good reasons why a buyer might want another address.

We should also note that we sell personal use quantities of fairly non-hot substances. Vendors selling heroin, meth or bulk quantities of anything scheduled might have their own reasons for avoiding PO boxes. The Grand Wizard isn't an expert in that game and will let more experienced people speak about those rules.


[1 Points] YoboomYo:

places where i live at u go to a PO box sign up is not literally a PO address is a physical address, you should ask around if they offer that!


[1 Points] None:

[deleted]


[1 Points] Vendor_BBMC:

Damned if I can think of a reason not to.


[1 Points] DickClarkFive:

I would assume the PO can take a dog and start sniffing the rows of boxes if they wanted to.

I think it has to do with the box being in control of the PO. Probably just an extra level of safety/paranoia on vendors part.