Rome - Post Report Question and Answers
How do you send and receive your letters and package mail? Are local postal facilities adequate?
DPO does it best, however the DPO sorting center in the US is quite possibly the worst I've ever experienced. Even my medication gets sent to the wrong DPO and I've watched it bounce between Albania, Tel Aviv, Turkemenistan, back to the US, and finally to Rome. Items I order from ebay or Etsy arrive in decent time, but anything Amazon is hit or miss. I had a Quince order that took two months to get here as it was mis-sent to other places first. Again, not the fault of the DPO here, they are fantastic people working there, but a much larger issue with the sorting centers back in the US. I am able to get mail locally and often order things to our apartment. Our portiere will collect them for us during the day. People who live in Grazioli are unable to order things to the residence, so that is the only downside of living there. - Jun 2026
DPO/Pouch. - Sep 2025
DPO. The pouch recently stopped all packages from coming in, so everyone who ordered from Chewy is stuck (they only ship pouch). During the fall/winter holidays, it took three months to receive letter mail and boxes in. I had a Christmas card that was sent 4 December that arrived in my DPO mail in February. Boxes get 'mis-sent' quite a bit. Average time waiting for a box is a month. Many of us get a local Italian Amazon account or a German one to ship in. A few times we've paid a higher VAT and shipped in from the UK Amazon. - Aug 2024
I use DPO address at the Embassy. Getting amazon packages by DPO or pouch from the U.S. takes forever, so some people open up a local Italian amazon account which speeds things up. - Sep 2022
The Italian Post office is easily the worst place on earth and where people's dreams go to die a horrible, slow death. - Oct 2014
Local post offices and packaging services similar to FedEx are plentiful. Expect long lines at the post office. - May 2013
There is a DPO post office at the Embassy. I also get letters and magazines delivered to my Italian apartment address. - Apr 2012
DPO or pouch. - Aug 2010
FPO is pretty quick. Italian post offices have long lines, but we've always had everything delivered, no problem. - Apr 2009
We have APO. Using the local mail is a crapshoot. I don't recommend it. - Feb 2008
We have an APO AND pouch. - Feb 2008