Poste restante (French, trans. post remaining) or general delivery is a service where the post office holds mail until the recipient calls for it. It is a common destination for mail for people who are visiting a particular location and have no need, or no way, of having mail delivered directly to their place of residence at that time.
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Canada Post uses the term “general delivery” in English, and “poste restante” in French. Travellers may use the service for up to four months, and it is also used in circumstances where other free methods of delivery (such as post office boxes) are not available.
The Canada Post guidelines for addressing of letter mail stipulate that general delivery mail should be addressed in the following fashion:
where “GD” is the abbreviation for “general delivery” (alternatively "PR" for “poste restante” in French), and “STN A” is the station or post office (in this case, “Station A”). When the mail is to be delivered to a retail postal outlet, then the abbreviation RPO is used, and in French the station is indicated by “SUCC” for “succursale,” or retail postal outlet by "CSP" for “comptoir postal”. In the above example, the French version of the address would use “PR SUCC A” for the second line.
Poste restante is offered in all post offices in Finland.
The address is entered using the following format:
It is also possible to use a nick name instead of real name. No ID is asked.
Here 123 45 represents the postal number of the post office. For example Helsinki central railway station post office is 00100 Helsinki.
In Finland letters received to poste restante address are kept in post office for three full calendar weeks and packages for two full calendar weeks.[1]
In Japan, the term yūbinkyoku-dome (郵便局留め lit. keep at the post office) indicates a Poste restante mail.
The Japan Post Service guidelines for addressing of letter mail stipulate that general delivery mail should be addressed in the following fashion:
Translation in English (Not the English format)
where “101-8799” is the postcode of the post office, “2-12 Kanda-awaji-chō, Chiyoda City, Tōkyō” is the address of the post office, “Kanda Post Office” is the name of the post office, and “keep/留め” indicates “poste restante” in French.
A poste restante mail in Japan will be kept in the post office for 10 days, ID document and stamp is required for pick up.
International mail to Japan may also use the British addressing format.
Mail should be adressed according to the following format: [2]
where 123-45 represents the zip code of the post office and 6 represents post office number within given city. (In Poland every post office is uniquely identified by city and number, eg. "Warszawa 1" or "Kraków 35". This numbers are used only when the post office itself is the point of delivery, eg. mailboxes or poste restante.) There is no address of a recipient on the envelope, and if no sender address is provided, mail is considered undeliverable after 14 days. Every Poczta Polska office is valid target for poste restante delivery and the service is provided with no additional cost. All types of mail, eg. letters, parcels and money orders can be sent to poste restante.
Not all post offices offer poste restante. The address is entered using the following format:
Here 123 45 represents the postal number of the post office. Post offices providing poste restante services can be located by searching for poste restante as "street address" in a given city (giving you a postal number) and then searching for post offices with that postal number.[3]
In the United Kingdom, mail is addressed to POSTE RESTANTE (or TO BE CALLED FOR), which is written after the full name of the recipient (as appears on the identification to be presented e.g. a passport, if abroad), then the name and full address of the destination post office, thus:
If only addressed to a town name, for example “POSTE RESTANTE, LONDON”, mail will go to the closest main post office branch (there being more than a hundred crown offices – directly-managed post office branches – in London[2]).
The sender should also include their return address. In the United Kingdom, the Royal Mail holds mail posted from within the UK for two weeks, whereas mail posted from abroad is normally held for one month, if the recipient is at sea however, it will be held for two months.[3] Where mail is not collected within that time, it will be returned to the sender, or if there is no sender indicated, will be treated as undeliverable. If the sender would like uncollected mail returned sooner, they can indicate this on the envelope. Timescales vary from country to country according to local practice.
In the United States, the US Postal Service uses the term “general delivery” and reserves the term “poste restante” for international mail sent to general delivery. Mail is addressed as follows:[4]
In the ZIP+4 code, the +4 code for general delivery is 9999. The main post office in a community will hold such mail for up to 30 days.[5] This may be a different post office from where over-sized packages and registered mail are held for any particular zip code. Note that many post offices within a medium to large city do not have general delivery, and mail addressed to these zip codes will either be forwarded to the Main Post Office or returned to sender.