Letterboxes in the front door - what countries have them and which have separate mailboxes

[cakeorwine]

Just returned from a European road trip - many interesting differences - but one thing I noticed was many countries seem to have mailboxes either on a post in the garden, on the pavement or attached to the wall. I don't think I saw any with a letterbox actually in the front door.

So is this just a British thing - or do other countries have them? I wonder why the differences - is a mailbox better / more efficient?

Apartment buildings here have a bank of locked boxes in the vestibule. The mail carrier uses a master key in a master lock to open them all at once, and shoves the mail in. Residents open their individual boxes using a key specific to the box. The carrier who delivers to my building prefers to throw all the mail on the floor, for some reason.

They aren't locked, and it can be an issue. When we had one back in the day, when we wrote checks and mailed bill payments, I would always either drop mine off at a post office or mail them from work. These days it's less of an issue with direct debit, etc. Most of the mail we get these days consists of advertisements, and we pay all bills online or with direct debit.

Most of the houses around where I live, North and not on the mainland, have external boxes, mine included. Don't have a letter box on the door and mine is wooden and not locked, some people just use metal or plastic type storage boxes.
Better for weatherproofing/insulation with no indoor mail slot and easier for the postie.

Also mail vans in the US have the steering wheel on the right side, unlike every other vehicle in the US, so that the mail carrier can just lean out or take a step or two to deliver the mail.

I'm in Ireland and there's a mixture. In towns there's usually a letterbox, but occasionally a mailbox like on my DS's house. In rural areas people will often have a mail box at the entrance to the property, but some people (like us) have a letterbox. I bet the postie hates us, we have a long drive.

We had a mailbox once (in the UK) we never remembered to look in it because we cba to find the key. It was an inprecise system therefore and I wouldn't do it again, although I prefer it

In Spain they're usually boxes on the wall. My Spanish DH thinks letterboxes in the door are not secure, like easier access for burglars or people being able to put stuff through to start a fire or whatever.

I'm in France and there are banks of mailboxes grouped together. Ours is up a steep hill behind the house, so if the weather is horrible we don't even check every day. And delivery people often can't find it! During Covid Curfew we weren't allowed out between 19.00 and 07.00 so many people could only access their mail at the weekend (going to work was permitted outside those hours but not walking to your mailbox).

Also the post doesn't arrive until mid-afternoon and I don't think there was ever a 'second post'. Mail is collected from most outbound mailboxes in the mornings so if you want to post something the same day you have to go to a bigger town (I'm in a little village, but the area is quite densely populated). Even then last post is at 16.00 (probably not it you live in Paris or Lyon).

I love most things about life here but the efficiency of the postal service is not one of them!

I have a mailbox at the end of the drive - not sure why but it was there when we moved in! Works fine for us (has a key). Postman comes to the door though if he has a bigger parcel or wants to say hello to the dog who adores him

It’s not uncommon to have a front fence and gate on Australian houses. We just have a separate mailbox or sometimes they’re incorporated into the fence.

The whole ‘taking a parcel in for the neighbour’ idea is completely alien to me. You either pick the parcel up for the local post office (or sometimes private courier company’) or have a parcel locker at a post office. If the parcel is small it’s often just left on your doorstep (obviously not if you’ve got a fence).

Yes I'm Australian also and was really surprised by the taking 8n a neighbour's parcel thing. Where I'm from there are very few front fences in suburban areas; most people have a mailbox next to the footpath. The postie is often on a motorbike and drives along to each mailbox to post the letters in.

Parcels come in a separate van. If you aren't home during the day, you can set up a standing arrangement that parcels are left at your doorstep. Otherwise they'll leave a card that you take to your local post-office to collect your parcel.

When I moved to the UK I was so excited to see letters come through the front door like on TV!

I've recently blocked front door letter box as dog has become mental so don't want post lady potentially hurt so added an outdoor box. However it is all junk mail now. Want to support them striking for poor conditions but think it should be a defunct job now

Same here. I like it that way, as it feels somewhat more secure. Our mailbox is on the outside wall of our house, just next to the front door.

I’m in Canada. Our city has the super boxes at regular intervals around the neighbourhood (I can see the back of ours from my window). When it’s -30 and below the postie needs to get the mail delivered quickly.

Each box has a master lock so the whole door opens and the postie can place your mail in your individual slot. You then access your own slot from the individual door. Large packages go in the bigger box if there’s space and the key goes in your slot. If there’s something in it, the postie will leave a card in your slot and you pick up from your closest Canada Post.

I wonder if it is due to the frequency of post.

In Victorian London you might get 10 deliveries in a day, when I was a child we still had 2 deliveries a day.

If you read contemporary account sometimes you read about an exchange of letters within a few hours.

Not a problem if you had servants to answer the door but if you were out at work and had no servant a slot in the door is useful.

Terraced houses didn't have any space for a post box.

In Australia only a small amount of inner city housing is built right up to the footpath. We have a gate and then steps down to the front garden and then a path to the house, as do all our neighbours. Would take the postie twice as long to do their rounds if we didn’t have mailboxes on the front fence. Posties usually travel on motorcycles and recently our suburb is trialling an electric trike thing. Our postie comes and knocks on the door to deliver parcels and if you’re not home they either leave them on the front verandah or if it’s registered mail they leave a card and you pick it up at the post office.

It's certainly different for the uk model, im guessing for anyone delivering post items, that if it's longer drives then the post box would be better near the entrance of the drive, although it's odd when you have the post box almost next to the door, unless it's to stop animals destroying the post.

In country Australia, the post boxes are by the road, often at the end of a very long driveway. In fact, I think sometimes there are even a cluster of post boxes at the start of the road for all of the houses on the road in some areas (but this is country, not suburb/city).

Yes, people get very creative with their post boxes. I’ve seen art installations, a lot of milk churner containers, oil barrels, even a microwave and a bbq being used as post boxes!

Every so often, I screech at DH to get him to turn around so I can take a photo.

When I was in the USA I lived in an apartment with a box outside. And then a house with a mail slot in the door just like the uk. Both in the city.

Same!

We are in Aus, mailboxes are separate and on the street but drives can be long or behind gates.

When we replaced the door, we were told to buy a mailbox as the door massively insulated so no point having a hole in it.
We have a locked letterbox and a big package box which is very handy.

We are in Aus, mailboxes are separate and on the street but drives can be long or behind gates
Not every area has separate mail boxes in Oz. My sister's house has a similar front door to mine in the UK and has a letterbox but no mail box. She lives in a nice estate. There's no room for mailboxes for every house.

Same for me. But this was in the urban core of an older US city where row houses were the norm in the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries. The house had been built around 1900. It's the only time I lived in a house that had a mail slot in the door. My dog, having spent most of his life in a suburban setting where he seldom encountered mail carriers, used to carry on barking fiercely every time the mail came through the door.