When you arrive in Dubai you soon discover there is one thing missing from your front door – a mail box! There is no mail delivery to your home in the UAE; all mail goes to PO Boxes. Many residents rely on their company PO Box address to have mail sent to but it is also easy to have your own private mail box. We applied for our own private PO Box because I was discovering that when my husband was travelling for business I wouldn’t receive mail for ages as I had to wait for him to return to the office – it was frustrating so I opened up our own PO Box at the nearest post office which was at that time in Jumeirah. There are many locations with PO Boxes around Dubai.

Visit the Emirates Post website to look for the nearest available location. Try and choose a location near your home or some place you pass each week. The cost of a private PO Box is Dhs200 per year (NB you must have a valid residency visa). Some of the new housing areas have created PO Boxes. For example Arabian Ranches have put in PO Boxes, unfortunately they only put in about 200 for 4000 home owners so it is very hard to get one! The majority of residents still use company PO Boxes but I found having my own PO Box much more convenient and it also means that if you are to ever leave your current employer and move to another employer in Dubai you do not have to inform everyone in the world of your new PO Box Number and lets face it having no address and just a PO Box number is hard enough for people abroad to understand!

Posting mail can be done at post offices but also other locations around town offer postal services such as at the customer service desk at Mall of the Emirates, Town Centre Jumeirah, Deira City Centre. The main post office is in Karama. You may find that you have to pick up mail at the Karama office if there is duty to be paid on the item you are receiving – you will be advised that there is a package to be picked up by a postcard sent to your PO Box. When going to pick up the mail that requires a signature make sure you take some ID with you.

Mail can be sent by normal post or registered post which is relatively inexpensive and then the item can be tracked.

As we all know when living in Dubai things do change and maybe having mail delivered to your door may not be an impossibility as there is a company called Emir Mail who is trialing this concept on residents on Palm Jumeirah (see article in 7 days).