How to Receive Parcels in Italy? Relay, Lockers, Poste Restante, Fermopoint
You have the standard solution: directly at home in Italy. I’ve seen a lot of delivery people, who make the effort to ring the bell at people’s homes. However, if you are away, as the Italian mailbox is often small, they won’t hesitate to leave the package in the hall (even if the front door is open). As an ex-parisian, it stresses me a lot lol.
This option isn’t possible for me because the intercom at my home in Rome does not work :'( If you are traveling and staying on Airbnb, you must encounter the same problem.
How can I receive my mail or parcels in Italy when I don’t have a fixed address in Italy or can’t receive them at home?
Choose to receive in a relay, locker or at the post office. I explain all this in this article.
Click on the links for more details on each service
| Sending country | Receiving country | Who sends it? | Recommended service | Withdrawal modes | Cost |
| Europe | Italy | An individual, Vinted | Colissimo, Chronopost, Mondial Relay | At home | 12,95€ minimum for 250g |
| Europe | Italy | An individual, Vinted | UPS or Mondial Relay with an address obtained with Fermoposta, Fermopoint | Relay | UPS: 22€ for 1kgMondial Relay: 9€Fermoposta: 3€ for a courier/colisFermopoint : 2,9€ |
| Europe | Italy | Amazon IT | Punti di ritiro | Relay | Free (in general) |
| Italy | Italy | E-commerce website | Punto Poste (if the site offers it) Caselle Postali | Lockers at post offices | Free (in general )100€/year if you rent a P.O. Box with Caselle Postali |
| Italy | Italy | E-commerce website | Withdrawal at the store (if the site offers it) | Pick up at the store | Free (in general) |
| Outside Europe | Italy | A private individual | UPS | At home or Relay | 22€ for 1kg |
| Outside Europe | Italy | E-commerce website | Shipito, Courier du Voyageur… | at home for ShipitoRelais or at home for Courrier du Voyageur | Dear |
| Italy | France | A private individual | Italian Post, UPS, DHL… | Relay or at home | it depends on the service |
Receive Amazon packages in Italy
Amazon Italy delivers, fortunately in many relays, post offices & lockers. I found one right in front of my house
For this, when you validate your order, click on “punti di ritiro”.
Then, enter the location where you are and Amazon will find lockers/relay/signs right next to you.
You will receive an email as soon as your package is sent / arrived. You have 14 days to collect your package using your ID + the package number.
If it’s a locker, you just have to scan the barcode sent by email.
Do your shopping on Amazon Italy by clicking here
Receive packages in a UPS relay
I opted for UPS for a purchase on Vinted. Vinted does not exist for Italy but I was able to bypass the system 😉 I asked a French Vinted saleswoman to send me the products via UPS. All this happens outside the Vinted platform so if she doesn’t send them, I lose my money (which I sent her via PayPal) but at least the delivery part is smooth.
I create and pay for a UPS waybill myself online. On this UPS slip, instead of having the package delivered to my home in Rome, I choose a UPS Relay (or UPS Access Point) near me. UPS Express delivers faster but it is expensive. I opt for UPS Standard, for 22€, I am entitled to 1kg
My experience: I email the sales slip to the seller. She prints it and sticks it on the package and drops it off to me at a UPS relay in France.
5 days later, it arrives and I pick it up at a UPS relay in Rome, very close to my home.
I use UPS for Italy because my package is too valuable, I prefer a secure service. DHL costs much more than UPS and does not have a “slow DHL” service to pay less. Another option is to send your Vinted package to a relative in France, who will then group your purchases and send them to you by UPS, or Colissimo or Mondial Relay by giving a Fermoposta or Fermopoint address. It’s a double delivery, but hey… at least you’ll have the Vinted protection.
Parcel forwarding services
You have other services such as Courrier du Voyageur or Shipito that take care of receiving packages in France for you (in the case of Shipito, they receive anywhere in the world) and reship them to another country. But it’s quite expensive and the rates aren’t very clear, it depends a lot on the size and weight of the package, which you can’t guess in advance especially if it’s an order placed on an ecommerce website.
The advantage of Shipito or Courrier du Voyageur is that they will be able to handle parcels coming from outside the EU and manage the “customs fees” part for you once the parcel arrives in France. Then, the shipment France-Italy will be done without any problem.
Receive parcels via Fermoposta : Poste restante
Offices and post offices can receive mail and parcels for you(more info). This is the equivalent of the Poste Restante in France.
I recommend you to do it only with parcels from Europe because they may refuse to receive a parcel from outside the EU with customs fees to pay.
First of all, you need to find out where to send your mail or package. You have the list here. Click on each point to see if they offer services such as: Fermoposta (for mail) and Fermo Posta Pacchi (for parcels). If so, you can send your mail there.
Then, so that we can send you things in Italy, you have to fill in the following address:
Your NAME + FIRST NAME
Name and full address of the post office, e.g. this one :
Ufficio postale di Roma 119, Via Giacomo Venezian 18, 00153 Roma RM
Your mail will be held for 30 days at the post office. If you do not pick it up, it will be returned to the sender.
My experience: Attention, it is very important that it is indicated in this order (your first & last name first). I had the misfortune to write the name of the post office first, and send it via Colissimo and my package is missing at the sorting center. I had to call the Italian customer service and explain it all in English. Finally they delivered it to the post office next door who tried to call me but the number given was a French number so they didn’t understand anything. When I went to the post office, nobody spoke English so I had to speak in Italian to pick up my package.
BRIEF, it works, but if your recipient in Italy doesn’t have an Italian number or doesn’t speak Italian, don’t even think about it.
Receive parcels via Caselle Postali
It is a solution for those who stay in Italy for a very long time. Indeed, the idea is to rent a mailbox in a post office, which is accessible during the opening hours of the post office. This box costs at least 100€/year (there are several sizes). 3 people can share the same box.
This service is partially interrupted because of Covid, I don’t know when it will be resumed.
Receive parcels via Fermopoint
It’s very simple.
Fermopoint allows you to receive mail directly at a relay near you (it’s as if you had a virtual mailbox in a relay).
- You register on the site https://www.fermopoint.it/ When you put your phone number, you must indicate the area code of France if you give a French number, like this: 00336XXXXXX Attention the number must be correct otherwise your account will not work (you will receive a OTP on this number to activate the account)
- You choose your relay (which will receive your package).
- You pay 2,9€ per withdrawal (PayPal accepted). If you expect to receive a lot of packages, you can choose packages of 10 for 10 withdrawals (18€), or 7,5€ for 3 withdrawals .
- Then, you can place an order on any website*
- You put your name (cognome) & first name (nome) but instead of indicating your address, you put the name of the relay + FP then its full address ( the address to be indicated will also be recalled in the confirmation email)
- You will receive an SMS upon receipt of the package
The site is in Italian but Italian is very close to French so there is no difficultyThe
relay will keep your package for 14 days
*However, they do NOTaccept
- parcels from Poste Italiane (because when the relay is closed, the Italian Post leaves a calling card, instead of coming back the next day). In case of sending parcels via Poste Italiane, I think it’s better to use the Punto Poste
- parcels from non-European countries with customs fees to be paid
- packages weighing more than 20 kg
It is very important to do it in this order, because if the package arrives and the relay has not been informed beforehand via Fermopoint that a package in your name is coming, it will reject it.
I recommend you to do it with parcels coming from Europe because they may refuse to receive a parcel with tax to pay for example.
My experience: This is the solution I chose to receive my NIOD products ordered at Lookfantastic (a UK site that uses GLS or TrakPak shipping services) and products ordered on the DECIEM, The Ordinary site (a UK site that uses DPD shipping services).
When the package arrived, I received notifications both via email (from GLS + Fermopoint) and by SMS (Fermopoint) on my French number. No difficulty to report.
Receive orders from Italian sites at post offices with Punto Poste
Unfortunately, many Italian sites only deliver to the home, while the Punto Poste service ( buy, send and deliver your package in a locker at the Italian Post Office) exists.
However, this service can only be used if the site in question offers “Punto Poste” as a delivery option. Here is the list of sites using Punto Poste
www.amazon.it (esclusi i Locker)
www.zalando.it
_COPY16 (solo per i resi)
beautypharma.emigross.it
Receive packages in stores
As a result, I only buy from sites that deliver to one of their stores, such as Douglas IT or Sephora IT (why I don’t buy directly in store is because online, there’s a lot more choice).
To do so, choose“Ritiro in negozio” when paying.
The delivery to the store is often free and the package arrives between 24 and 48 working hours.
You have to come with your identity card & order number to pick up the package.
The seller will open the package with you to check the contents of the package and will give you all the contents in a nice bag.
On the other hand, there’s something annoying at Douglas IT, is that they ask for the tax number “codice fiscale” when you place an order and choose to withdraw at the store. I’m not a resident of Italy so I don’t have that code.
On the other hand, there are a lot of sites that allow you to “generate” your tax code as codicefiscaleonline comSinceyou have
to fill in the name/ first name/sex correctly, you can enter anything for the city & date of birth, it’s not important (I encourage you to fill in anything because it’s not a good thing to leave your date of birth & place of birth on a site you don’t know).
Once the tax code has been generated, you can continue shopping in peace.
My experience: 0 difficulty to report. The saleswomen only speak Italian but they understand very well what it is all about as soon as you show them the order confirmation email.
Sending a parcel from Italy to France
To pay less, you can use the Italian postal service, but I understand that it isn’t super reliable or fast. However, there are plenty of “punto poste” (relays) where you can drop off your parcel (which you stamp online and print the slip), it will save you the queue at the post office.
For more security, use DHL (33€), UPS (22€) but the rates depend a lot on the size and weight of your package
For more general advice on “how to receive packages anywhere in the world”, read our article here
