A USPS charge on your card: USPS CHANGE OF ADDRESS, USPS PO BOXES ONLINE, or USPS PO and ten digits

USPS CHANGE OF ADDRESS is the fee the Postal Service charges to check who you are when a change of address is filed on usps.com. It is $1.25 since July 2025, and USPS says it is not refunded.¹² USPS PO BOXES ONLINE is a Post Office Box rented or renewed on usps.com.⁵ USPS PO, ten digits and a town is a purchase at the counter of the post office in that town.⁷⁸

The same fee under three names, and what USPS said it cost

The State of Delaware publishes every purchase its employees make on state cards. Its data has 39 lines named USPS CHANGE OF ADDRESS between 30 August 2019 and 10 March 2026.⁹ Before that name the same fee was printed under two others. The amounts follow what usps.com said the fee was at the time, in copies of its change-of-address page held by the web archive:

So the amount can date the charge: $1.00 before 2019, $1.05 to 2021, $1.10 to July 2025, $1.25 since. Six more lines are exact multiples of the fee on a single day, from two to five times it: $5.25 on 4 March 2021, $2.10 on 9 June 2021, $3.30 on 25 July 2022, $4.40 on 19 October 2022, $2.20 on 18 April 2023 and $5.50 on 24 August 2023. Our reading is that one card paid for several requests, for example for several people moving. On 17 July 2020 one department’s $1.05 appears as two lines of 0.52 and 0.53.⁹

Why it can be on a card that was never used to move

To file online, USPS says you pay the fee with a card whose billing address matches your old or your new address, and that the payment is how it checks the card against the bank.¹⁴ Its security notice says that since 1 May 2023 an online request needs extra identity steps as well.¹ The refund page is short: the fee is for the identity check, “There are No Refunds for the $1.25 authentication fee”, and a third-party website that tried to file for you is the one to contact, because since 31 May 2023 the Postal Service no longer accepts requests from third parties.²

The Postal Inspection Service warns about those third-party sites: they “can charge up to $40 to change the address and, in some cases, the changes never get made”, and changing an address is free in person at a post office.⁶ One line in Delaware’s data fits the warning’s size, though the name does not tell us who was paid: ADDRESS UPDATE USPS, $39.95, on 3 November 2018, when usps.com’s own fee was $1.00.⁹³ If your line says USPS but the amount is not the fee for that year, treat it as a charge from somebody else.

USPS PO BOXES ONLINE

The same state data has 77 lines named USPS PO BOXES ONLINE between 14 December 2016 and 15 August 2026, and 31 of them are dated the 15th.⁹ That fits USPS’s own terms for the online box service: an automatic payment “could appear on Your credit card statement as early as the 15th of the month prior to the due date”. A three-month rental must be on automatic renewal; a six- or twelve-month rental is automatic by default, and you can cancel the automatic payment until the 14th of the month before the next due date. USPS says it emails you at least 10 days before the charge.⁵

Two cardholders have described this line on Reddit. A post of 23 May 2024 says a household going through its statements found “several USPS PO Boxes Online charges for varying amounts - anything from $4 to $77” starting in July 2022 and “we have never had any PO boxes”; the poster adds that they moved twice and forwarded mail in 2022–23. A post of 29 August 2023 says “went to go renew my po box, said error, charged my card, but still says i need to renew”, and adds that the card had been charged twice. Both are the posters’ own accounts, not our findings.¹⁰

The terms have a rule for a box nobody uses. If the box was reserved online and never activated at a post office, you can close it and get a full refund online within 30 days of the reservation; after that deadline the service “issues an automatic full refund and closes the box”.⁵ Signing in at PO Boxes Online shows the boxes on the account, the card on file and the payment history, and has a link to close a box and ask for a refund.¹¹

USPS PO and ten digits: the number is the post office, not your order

Delaware’s data has 95 different names of the form USPS PO and ten digits, 12,296 lines, from 7 September 2016 to 26 September 2026. The single busiest, USPS PO 0917600901, has 2,358 lines from 28 different departments, for amounts from 0.05 to 5,200.00.⁹ One number shared by that many buyers and amounts cannot be an order or a transaction number.

A Louisiana school system publishes its card statements with a line-by-line description. In its file for July 2024 to June 2025 there are ten such numbers, each printed with one town, and the busier ones are shared by many cardholders: for example USPS PO 2120150135 COVINGTON, LA and USPS PO 2100390425 ABITA SPRINGS, LA, and USPS PO 2181120255 SLIDELL, LA, which carries 44 lines from 11 cardholders. The lines describe what was bought: “First-Class Letter”, “First-Class Lg Env”. In its July–August 2026 file, USPS PO 2169290480 is “US Flags Coil/100”, four at $82.00 each, $328.00 in all.⁸ So a line like this is postage or stamps bought at the counter of the post office in that town; check the town against where you or your household have been.

The format began on 7 September 2016. Before it the same purchases were printed as USPS and 17 or 18 digits, for instance USPS09176009035400373 (549 lines from 30 June 2014 to 2 September 2016). Of the 64 older names, 59 start with the same nine digits as a USPS PO number, which we read as the same post offices under a new format.⁹ Numbers also change: in late May and early June 2023 two of the busiest were replaced within days, and the same departments carried on under the new ones.

How to find it and get the money back

1. Read the amount and the date $1.25 since July 2025 is the identity fee; a multiple of it may be several requests in one go. A charge dated the 15th can be a box payment: USPS’s terms say as early as the 15th. Ask the people who use the card whether anyone moved, forwarded mail or rented a box.
2. Look for what a real request leaves behind An email with a confirmation code, a letter to the old address and a letter to the new one, each sent to the person who filed.¹ If there is none and nobody in the household filed a request, someone used the card number.
3. For a box, sign in to PO Boxes Online Check the boxes on the account, the card on file and the payment history. Remove the card, and use close and request a refund for a box that is not yours.¹¹ USPS’s help line is 1-800-ASK-USPS (1-800-275-8777).²
4. If it is not yours, call your bank Dispute the charge and ask for a new card; ask the bank what its deadline is. USPS itself says the $1.25 is not refunded, so a card dispute is the way back for a fee you did not make.

Is this a scam?

The names are real: a state and a school system pay them every month.⁸⁹ A real name does not make every charge yours. Other websites file changes of address for a fee; the Postal Inspection Service warns about them.⁶ A text message with a link that says a parcel is waiting is a different problem: the Inspection Service says USPS’s free tracking messages never contain a link, and that anyone who opened one should tell their bank.¹² The charge that follows from that is on a card the thief uses elsewhere, usually not under a USPS name.

Why this page is on a site about held money

This site records payment companies that hold back money that belongs to someone else. USPS is not in the incident record. What this page shares with it is the question a cardholder asks first: what is this, can I get it back, and who do I ask. Other postage lines are on the STAMPS.COM page, and other lines are in the table of statement names.

Sources

1. USPS, "Standard Forward Mail & Change of Address": “Pay the $1.25 identity verification fee. The billing address on your credit card must match either your old or new address”; the confirmation code by email, the letter to the old address and the letter to the new one; the 1 May 2023 security notice. usps.com. Read on 19 October 2026. Archived copy of 19 October 2026.
2. USPS Help, "Change of Address Refund Request" (article 000006167, 30 June 2026): “There are No Refunds for the $1.25 authentication fee”; the call to 1-800-ASK-USPS; the rule on third-party websites since 31 May 2023; “If you are charged more than $1.25 … dispute the charge with your credit card company.” faq.usps.com. Read on 19 October 2026. The web archive’s copy keeps only the page frame, not this text.
3. USPS, the change-of-address page above, in the web archive, fee as worded on each copy: 8 January 2016 ($1.05), 9 March 2017 ($1.00), 8 November 2018 ($1.00), 3 January 2019 ($1.00), 31 January 2019 ($1.05), 2 August 2021 ($1.05), 1 September 2021 ($1.10), 10 July 2025 ($1.10), 16 July 2025 ($1.25). The date of each change is known only to within the gap between two copies. Checked on 19 October 2026.
4. USPS Help, "Change of Address - The Basics": the authentication fee, and that the card number and billing address are checked electronically with the issuing bank; PS Form 3575 as the way to avoid the fee. faq.usps.com. Read on 19 October 2026.
5. USPS, "Terms and Conditions" of PO Boxes Online, Payment Policy and Refund Policies: the 15th of the month, the three-, six- and twelve-month terms, cancelling by the 14th, the 10-day email, and the refund rules for a box that was never activated. usps.com. Read on 19 October 2026. Archived copy of 19 October 2026.
6. U.S. Postal Inspection Service, "Change of Address Scams": $1.10 for an identity validation fee on USPS.com; other sites “can charge up to $40”; free in person. uspis.gov. Read on 19 October 2026. Archived copy of 19 October 2026.
7. Statement lines of the form USPS PO and ten digits as printed in the two sources below (8, 9).
8. St. Tammany Parish Public Schools (Louisiana), "Credit Card Transactions July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025" and "July 1, 2026 to August 31, 2026": every USPS PO line with its town, the items and the amounts. Cardholder names are in the files and left off this page. 2024–25 file, 2026 file. Read on 19 October 2026.
9. State of Delaware Open Data, State Employee Credit Card Transactions, fields "merchant", "trans_dt" and "merchandise_amt". The change-of-address lines; USPS PO BOXES ONLINE; lines starting USPS PO. Queried and counted on 19 October 2026.
10. Reddit, r/Scams, “fradulent USPS PO box situation?”, 23 May 2024 (reddit.com); r/usps_complaints, “USPS Charged my card for PO Box renew even tho it said processing error…”, 29 August 2023 (reddit.com). Each poster’s own account. Read in a web browser on 19 October 2026; Reddit answers the web archive with a bot-check page, so no archived copy could be made.
11. USPS, "Rent a PO Box": managing a box online (card on file, payment history), closing it and requesting a refund, partial refunds for an active box. usps.com. Read on 19 October 2026. Archived copy of 19 October 2026.
12. U.S. Postal Inspection Service, "Smishing: Package Tracking Text Scams": free USPS tracking messages “will NOT contain a link”; notify your financial institution if you interacted with the link. uspis.gov. Read on 19 October 2026.