What a letter means
Letters are category judgments from (1) the operating model, (2) published bank / processor / Google rules, and (3) whether public complaint records cluster on lost mail. They are not averages of Trustpilot stars and they are not lab measurements. We would rather publish a conservative C with a citation than a precise 8.4 we cannot defend.
| Band | Banking / KYC | Google Business Profile | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A–B | Company-run room, published process, narrow geography. | You actually occupy the place, or the product is a genuine commercial lease plus utility in the entity name — still not a guarantee. | You staff a signed location during stated hours, or you correctly hide a service-area profile. Almost no mailbox reaches this band. |
| C | Marketplace or hybrid: usable if the local store is competent; variance is the product. | Purpose-built lease paperwork (e.g. TruLease) that still depends on the reviewer. | Not used. Virtual occupancy is a written fail. |
| D–F | Wrong tool (agent-only) or a pattern of reported loss / no remote scans. | Published CMRA, PO Box, UPS-box, virtual-mailbox, or registered-agent exclusion for the field that matters. | Google’s virtual-office and remote-mailbox rules. |
We ask: who employs the person opening the envelope? If the answer is “a franchisee who licensed an app,” the ceiling is a C-band grade, because lost-package disputes in 2026 complaint files repeatedly stall at “the store vs the software company.” Owned hubs (US Global Mail, VirtualPostMail mailbox, PhysicalAddress.com as described in 2026 reviews) sit in the B band. We do not award A without first-party operational observation we have not done.
Complaint boards are cited with dates and labeled reported. A 2.2 on ComplaintsBoard is not our Mail letter. It is evidence that the marketplace model produces public fights about missing parcels.
Banking / KYC
We read the institution’s current help page before we read a blog.
- Mercury: no P.O. box, virtual address, CMRA, mail center, or registered agent as the physical / principal place of business.
- Relay (August 11, 2026): operating address cannot be an agent, PO Box, or virtual mailbox.
- Bluevine: no registered agent or P.O. box on the application help we cite; “mail service addresses” refused on a profile article. Virtual offices are not clearly defined there, so we do not invent a Bluevine CMRA sentence.
- Stripe Issuing / Treasury / Opal / Corporate Card: CMRA and registered-agent validations, with a public error code.
Any ordinary virtual mailbox therefore gets F on this grade. A lease product gets a C-band grade because it is aimed at the document list Stripe publishes for appeals. We will not print “accepted by Mercury” until Mercury’s page says so.
Google Business Profile
Source: Guidelines for representing your business on Google. P.O. boxes and remote mailboxes are unacceptable. A rented mailing address you do not operate from is not eligible. Coworking listings need your signage, your staff, and customers during hours. Mailboxes are F. We will not sell a “Maps hack.”
What we refuse to put in the data file
- Unsourced location counts presented as our audit.
- Street View color commentary we did not make.
- A single blended score that hides an F behind a pretty mail grade.
Vendor facts live in src/_data/vendors.json. City streets live in src/_data/cities.json. To add a city or a use-case, follow the README. Nightly pages should change data, not CSS.