Hello again, I recently had to leave my apartment in Strasbourg and have relocated to the Antibes area. I am staying in an Airbnb while I look for a new apartment to lease. However, that may take another month or two, and I cannot receive mail at this Airbnb.
How should I handle this with La Poste? Is renting a post office box for particuliers a thing in France? I am concerned that important mail may be lost sine I am currently without an address to forward my mail to.
Hi there.. I know there are (private) mailboxes at the local sorting centre, as I saw them when we had an official visit (very interesting)
Frankly, why don’t you ask at your local Post Office… they can give you all the info 
In my old region, the local post office in the next town had PO Boxes inside the bureau to rent but you can only access them in open hours. Personally I would go and get it from the horse’s mouth as what is best for you.
Thank you. I suppose I must go inquire on site. I honestly have come to dread dealing with La Poste. Always seems to be one of the least welcoming and functional bureaucratic systems, and that’s saying something.
Our local La Poste isn’t very big but it has a few boxes. You may not need to go to a large branch.
Yes, just go to the nearest proper post office to your address with some proof of address such as an attestation d’hébergement and of your identity. I think with AirBnB you can print out an attestation for visa purposes which will probably do.
We have a nice smily postmistress and a grumpy one. If we see through the door that the grumpy one is on duty we turn round and return another day!
Snap. I wonder if it’s a staffing requirement of La Poste?! Today I was battling with Mme Grumpy who delighted in telling me, when I eventually got to the front of a long queue, that I couldn’t send my parcel to the UK without having done an online customs declaration..When I looked blank (she’s no doubt right - I’ve never sent a parcel or the UK until now, only letters) she said, rather unnecessarily ‘that’s what you get for leaving Europe”.
I think I’ll adopt Jane’s policy of only going in when Mme.Smiley is on duty.
Like another business/shop/office/whatever personnel will differ.
Thankfully, our laPoste is manned by a beloved member of our commune and even though she works hard to support her family, she always manages to be pleasant and helpful.
At other Postoffices, I have noticed that, when there are long queues, staff do not give so much time to “being helpful” but just want to move the customers along as fast as possible. They are doing their job, but perhaps not going that extra mile.
only a close French friend would say such a thing to me.. and it would be a joke we could both share, even so I’d pretend to box their ears.
Anyone else would get a polite earful from me in icily-calm French ! and I have a “look” that can “freeze the blood” at a hundred paces (so my friends tell me) 
I encountered multiple very kind and helpful staffers on my journey to the Juan-les-Pins La Poste today. Easily the best experience I’ve had at La Poste.
They got me all signed up with a three month contrat de réexpédition et garde du courrier. Not exactly cheap and I’ve been informed that I must pay another small fee for every piece of mail I claim, but I apparently can reject, without charge, the advertisements, fidelity card mailers, and other trash that I don’t care about.
Very productive and easy errand except for the fact that due to the continuing unpleasantries back in the States, they still aren’t accepting packages bound for US addresses. Guess my friend is going to have to visit France if he wants his Christmas gift.
I think gifts under €100 are now ok.
@George1. my parcel to the UK without having done an online customs declaration”
. I like to support local post office but there are some things that are just so much easier at home..
Do the whole thing online including stamps
Apologies for the digression (but not wholly sincere as I love the unforeseen possibilities of SF thread drift).
Last week, my wife who is a very intelligent woman with an MA from an anglophone university , but whose English can occasionally be idiosyncratic, asked me out of the blue if ‘the yellow one was the right one for the post?’
I assumed the combination of ‘yellow’ and ‘post’ meant it was something to do with La Poste’s public mail boxes, so asked why she wasn’t taking post to the post office. There followed blank incomprehension on her part. After a few minute’s bickering I learned she actually wanted the key to our mailbox, which has a yellow tag.
That would be fine, were it not, for reasons too complicated to explain, all the tagged keys in our key drawer have a yellow tag…
Reminds me of my niece on her first visit to our home in Bretagne and she wanted to post some cards home to her friends. I found her trying to stick them in the red fire hydrant outside the Mairie and had to explain that red was not a mutual colour for all post boxes plus it was for the fire dept whilst the yellow boxes were French post boxes.
My OH does very similar things all the time. I think womens brains work on a different level to mens, and they just expect us to be able to keep up 
In Corsica last year we met an Australian tourist outside the post office in Bonifacio. We explained it was closed because they were on strike so she asked us about the stamps on her postcards. She had bought ‘international stamps’ before she left home and thought she could use them on her travels…
but Corsica is not “international” it is a whole different world of its own.
another planet (and we love it!)
She really needs intergalactic-postcards (ready stamped) and available from her nearest spaceship
That’s shocking! It obviously hasn’t occurred to her that a lot of us are in France because our compatriots voted to leave. 