- PRIVATE from Page EldenBrul, owner of Mobile Computer Professor in Scottsdale.
VandenBrul started using a mailbox rental store, and its address on her business cards, when she started her home-based business three years ago. She liked the convenience of having someone available to accept software deliveries, the credibility of a business address and, most important, the ability to keep her home address private from solicitors and other traffic. She figures she will have spent $200 to $500 getting her business stationery reprinted with the PMB designation.
Shelley Lahr, owner of homebased Textures & Tones Window Covering in Phoenix, said she spent $150 changing her business stationery from "Suite" to "PMB."
"I liked it better the other way," Lahr said. She, too, uses a mailbox store for privacy reasons and because she believes its address gave her business a more professional look than a residential address.
There are more than 300 mailbox rental stores in Arizona, averaging 350 boxes each, according to Postal Service and industry estimates. About 60 percent of the customers for Mail Boxes Etc., the Valley's largest chain, with nearly 50 stores, are small-office/home-office entrepreneurs, franchisee Larry Rogoff said.
"It's affected our customers because it's impeded their ability to take advantage of our business addresses," he said of the PMB furor.
Postal officials say the new designation and other controls are designed to help postal inspectors track down boxholders who commit credit-card fraud and conduct mailorder scams. The new rules will make it easier to track "identity
thieves" and fly-by-night businesses that advertise some product or service, collect customers' checks and skip town, the Postal Service says.
The new designation also would eliminate the chance of deceiving consumers, said Donna Spini, a local Postal Service spokeswoman. "If it says 'suite,' that's leading people to believe a whole different set of events," she said.
The Postal Service also plans to set up an 800 number and publish on its Web site a list of addresses of mailbox rental stores, so consumers can check the address of someone they're doing business with. The industry says it agreed to the change because the store addresses are available from phone books and other sources.
Some, like VandenBrul, fear those listings will still cast a cloud over their businesses. Others say
the home-based business phenomenon, and associated use of mailbox stores, have become so widespread that the old stigma is nearly gone.
"It's not a negative now, because a lot of people want to stay home," said Judy Hacker of Phoenix, editor of the MOMversations monthly newsletter for mothers. Hacker, whose business is also home-based, says she thinks the Postal Service changes are for a good reason, but adds that it will cost her hundreds of dollars to change her business stationery and notify clients.
The debate started last spring, when the Postal Service proposed new fraud- fighting regulations for Commercial Mail Receiving Agencies. The regulations gave boxholders six months to incorporate the PMB label in their mailing addresses; required the mailbox stores to get two forms of identification from boxholders, including