Poste restante (French, trans. post which remains) is a service where the post office holds mail until the recipient calls for it. It is a common destination for mail for people who are visiting a particular location and have no need, or no way, of having mail delivered directly to their place of residence at that time.
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In the United Kingdom, mail is addressed to POSTE RESTANTE (or TO BE CALLED FOR), which is written after the full name of the recipient (as appears on the identification to be presented ie. the passport, if abroad), then the name and full address of the destination post office, thus:—
If only addressed to a town name, for example POSTE RESTANTE, LONDON (there are currently 115 crown offices in LONDON[1]) mail will go to the closest main post office branch.
The sender should also include their return address. In the United Kingdom, the Royal Mail holds mail posted from within the UK for two weeks, whereas mail posted from abroad is normally held for one month, if the recipient is at sea however, it will be held for two months. Where mail is not collected within that time, it will be returned to the sender, or if there is no sender indicated, will be treated as undeliverable. If the sender would like uncollected mail returned sooner, they can indicate this on the envelope. Timescales vary from country to country according to local practice.
In the United States, the US Postal Service uses the term general delivery and reserves the term poste restante for international mail sent to general delivery. Mail is addressed as follows:[2]
In the ZIP+4 code, the add-on code for general delivery is 9999. The main post office in a community will hold such mail for up to 30 days.[3] This may be a different post office from where over-sized packages and registered mail are held for any particular zip code. Note that many post offices within a medium to large city do not have general delivery, and mail addressed to these zip codes will either be forwarded to the Main Post Office or returned to sender.
Canada Post uses the term General Delivery in English, and Post Restante in French. Travellers may use the service for up to four months, and it is also used in circumstances where other free methods of delivery (such as post office boxes) are not available.
The Canada Post guidelines for addressing of letter mail stipulate that General Delivery / Post Restante mail should be addressed in the following fashion:
where "GD" ("PR" for Post Restante in French) is the abbreviation for General Delivery, and "STN A" is the Station, or post office (in this case, Station A). When the mail is to be delivered to a Retail Postal Outlet, then the abbreviation RPO is used, and in French the station is indicated by "SUCC" for Succursale, or Retail Postal Outlet by "CSP" for "Comptoir postal". So, in the above example, the French version of the address would use PR SUCC A for the second line.
   | USPS General Delivery (USA) - USPS - Receive Mail at Other Locations |
| | Royal Mail Poste Restante (UK) - Royal Mail - Products and Services for Personal Customers |
| | House of Commons Written Answers - House of Commons Hansard Debates for 18 May 2007 (pt 0013) |
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