I work for Textbroker and blog and generally have my life online in part because I have serious health issues and papers make me sick. So I try to live as paper free as possible.
The less I handle papers, the better. So I have a number of personal quirks related to trying to minimize my contact with papers.
One of those quirks is that it has been many years since I checked my mail daily. I sometimes go weeks without checking my mail. Unless I'm expecting something in particular, it's mostly junk mail anyway because I pay my bills online.
Sometimes when I can get my act more together, I try to check it more like once a week. But I never check it daily.
I've lived this way for more than a decade and it has never before caused me problems. Until this past year.
When I had a corporate job, I lived in an apartment complex with locked mailboxes and sometimes checked mail every couple of weeks. This never resulted in the mail carrier deciding I had moved.
I was homeless when I began working for Textbroker, but I always had a mailing address. Sometimes it was with a homeless services center. Usually, it was a paid mailing address of some sort. Again, I never checked my mail daily and it never caused problems.
But I currently live in a cheap rental with a high turnover rate and the mail carrier is quick to decide I don't live here anymore. For the second time in less than a year, they are returning my mail to sender as if I were evicted and left no forwarding address.
Among other things, they returned my paper 1099 to Textbroker. This resulted in my Textbroker account being temporarily locked. I think I was able to sign into it, but they said I wasn't going to be able to work or get paid again until I could prove to them I still live here, I'm just having trouble getting my mail.
Fortunately, it only took a couple of days to straighten this out with Textbroker. (I'm still not sure I've got it straightened out with the post office yet. I guess I will start checking my mail daily and also talk to the carrier. I've already been to the post office again about this issue.)
Textbroker was wonderfully on the ball, but they said it is an IRS requirement that they verify that I really live here. I worked in insurance for a few years, so I'm quite familiar with needing to comply with federal regulations.
Let me tell you, I was freaking out at the prospect of possibly being cut off from the ability to earn a paycheck. I was so glad it was handled quickly.
As far as I know, Textbroker sends you mail only once a year when they mail out tax forms. They also send a digital copy, which is the one I actually use for filing my taxes because I hate handling papers, so I never thought the paper copy really mattered.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
So a word to the wise: Make sure your physical mailing address works -- even if you do everything online, like I do -- or Textbroker will lock up your account if your 1099 gets sent back to them marked "Return to sender."
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