anybody know anything about locking/"secure" mailboxes?

[solarbird]

Anybody know anything about "secure" locking mailboxes, as in, which are decent and which are junk, and how to tell which is which? We had a set of bills stolen so I want to get something which can help with that. this model is at Home Depot and some of the neighbours have them, only in black. (I'd get black too, white mailboxes in our climate == filthy.) It's Mailsafe model RSKW0000 if the link doesn't work, which it probably won't because Home Depot's website can lick me where I pee. Someone on the way to the shops on Goat Trail Road has one of these, and we'd think about getting the smaller one. Are either of those any good? Does anybody know how I'd go about even finding out?

Comments

[smeehrrr.livejournal.com]

Honestly, even if it isn't very good it's still good enough. Mail thieves are looking for the quick grab, they're not going to fuck around with a locking mailbox when there's an unlocked one twenty feet away.

[solarbird]

Yeah, I've kind of been thinking that, but I've also been thinking that more and more of the neighbourhood is getting the basic Home Depot kind, and I'm wondering whether mail thieves will decide to try easier neighbourhoods or whether they'll start bringing, I dunno, lockpicks or chainsaws or something.

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

My parents had a locking box that just annoyed the postman into not dropping off their mail. And really, there isn't a way to stop someone from stealing the outgoing mail from what I can see, just incoming. Aaand, your first link doesn' work.

[solarbird]

There are a lot of houses in the neighbourhood with locking boxes already and nobody at the post office seems to mind. At the neighbourhood meeting last Tuesday they were actually strongly encouraging people to get locking type.

Yah, I know about the outgoing mail problem. p \></ q We'll just have to settle for using a blue postbox for that stuff. Fortunately Anna walks by one on the way to work.

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

Yah, I have to do that anyway since the apartment complex doesn't really have an outgoing box.

[amaltheae.livejournal.com]

Looking at the two of them, I would say the first one is the cheap kind which, unless it says differently on the box, may have a cheap lock on it. The second one looks like it was built to withstand a baseball bat too, and some of the sites I found it on quickly had a lot of information up that suggests it is a pretty high quality with attention to detail.

My first suggestion on which one is worth it, would be to ask people who have each whether they are happy with them. Most of the time they're not going to be bothered by such a stopping by to ask for their advice.

Do you have any idea who, in general terms, is stealing mail? If it's kids fucking around, the cheaper one is probably sufficient safety wise, but I would tend to assume that it won't be the most insanely durable comparatively over time without getting opinions of neighbors, but that might be alright if you're not worried about baseball bats or more sophisticated theivery.

If someone has had fraud issues or some reason to believe someone is doing more with the mail than throwing it on a roof somewhere or into a ravine to amuse themselves, I would personally probably spend the money for the more expensive one because putting it in froogle by "oasis mailbox" brought up some extensive descriptions that inspired much more confidence than any of the couple that came up for the mailsafe one.

[solarbird]

I forgot all about Froogle - thanks. ^_^

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

My mom has a pretty good one, which I can't seem to find on teh internets based on looking for something that looks like it, but I can get the model info from her. Some months back a guy came around the corner and drove right into the thing in front of her house that holds her mailbox and half a dozen more, so she got her handyman dude to build a new thingy and while they were at it, most of them upgraded the locking kind, and they almost all got the same model.

I will point out that the lockingness doesn't help with the *outgoing* mail. But it's really no harder for the postal delivery person, they open the slot at the top, put in the mail, and then when the slot closes, the mail falls down into the locked portion.