Carey & Karen,
Hello, and congratulations on your upcoming adventure! As for mail scanning services, like yourself, I have found them to be lacking. When Rita and I were first planning to move here 5 years ago, I tried three different services. In test mailings, I found that there was still at least a week’s delay in receiving notification that a letter was present, then another few days after requesting the scanned contents. Also, all services charged a fee for check deposits.
We have found the best strategy is before you leave, switch over as much as you can to electronic correspondence. It is easier than ever to make that change for bank statements, utility bills, investment account statements, etc. Most expats find it useful to keep an American mailing address, and end up using family or friends. There are also mailbox services like Mailbox Etc. that will give you an address, but they do not check the mail for you – you would still need someone to pick it up for you periodically, or check it on return visits.
Having your mail sent to Ecuador is not a good option either. We’ve had letters take 3-4 weeks to show up here, and one never arrived at all.
On the other hand, it is easy to SEND mail online. There are services like MailaLetter that will let you compose mail or upload pdfs, which are then send through the US mail.
Sorry to not have a cut-and-dried solution for you. Dealing with mail is tricky in most countries outside the US.
-jim
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