APO and FPO Shipping Guide for Overseas Military

A common problem for military stationed overseas, and their dependents, is their ability to shop online with ease. There are still many online merchants who will not sell to military using APO/FPO addresses, even though they offer shipping options using USPS (United States Post Office), which is the way in which those who are military and living overseas receive their package deliveries.

More often than not, the difficulty results from the merchant not understanding how to ship to APO or FPO addresses, and it is to easy for them to just not ship to those addresses rather than become informed of what is involved. The reasoning for why many of these merchants will not ship to APO or FPO addresses is because they think these addresses are international addresses, and this is just not so. APO (Army/Air Force Post Office) and FPO (Fleet Post Office or Federal Post Office) are not international addresses, but are considered United States addresses.

Even though there are so many military friendly merchants out there, there are still many more who do not ship to them only because they do not understand that they are not international addresses; other merchants have other reasons like it being inconvenient. There is definitely a need for a guide to shipping APO/FPO, and it is the hope that by putting together a brief guide others, especially merchants, will have a new and better understanding for the process.

• APO/FPO addresses are not international addresses.
There is an assumption, that because we reside in a foreign country, our mail goes through an international postal carrier. This is not so. Our mail goes through USPS Priority Mail. If USPS surface mail is chosen, a package will take up to eight weeks to arrive, sometimes longer. Of course, this limits us when it comes to businesses that use only Federal Express or UPS; however, maybe in the near future, if negotiations go that way, this too may be an option. Mail sent to APO/FPO addresses will go either to California, New York, or Florida before it is transported to the overseas military installations.