Is this true?
Also is there any reason or glitch that would make a mail box disappear? I noticed in a household ages ago that the mail box had just disappeared. I don't use moveobjects much (apart from unsticking sims to whatever they somehow get stuck to) so I know I didn't accidentally delete it myself.

Yes, it's true.

Deleting the portals is a VBT as well. Remember the very serious Nightlife bug where random objects would get deleted if a Sim started juggling? It was fixed in the Nightlife patch, but while that bug was around, lots could be borked when the game decided to chuck the car portal and all of a sudden the carpool never shows up.

Just to know there is mailbox here: http://daydream.etowns.net/ if you click around and find mods on that site. And this I think is the Apartment mailbox but I never use so not sure: http://modthesims.info/d/413573

Just get the buyable mailbox by sophiedavid, then you can replace the missing one with the actual game one. That one from daydreams is a clone and is a hack that may not even be compatible with all EPs

I removed everything even vaguely related to mailboxes (including deleting a string of numbers, not in a download mentioned in some post); also took out every hack related to apartments. Made two test apartments on different lots, starting as residential, simple build, "changelotzoning apartmentbase" - didn't change mailbox. Left and reentered lot - still just residential box. It seems to PLAY OK - so maybe it's not affecting anything.

no... i will not regenerate... and if you deleted the mailbox.. it could bork your lot/neighborhood or even your game... ?..(i don't know if it cause anything harmless..?)
but.. you can fix.. by download the maillbox.. just search "buyable mailbox".. and that's it...

I've been using the AL version from daydreams for years. I have all EP's and Sp's, although I've only ever used it on residential lots and it works perfectly fine. I didn't even know of the sophiedavid one, I'll have to check that out.

Maybe try taking out all your cc grammapat, otherwise that stumps me. I have on occasion seen the Maxis apartment box flash back to a residential for a second on use. I think the one on the mobile homes is a bit buggy, but otherwise they always change for me.

Mobile homes? Do you mean just putting each "apartment" on a foundation (so it sort of looks like a trailer)? I've never heard about that being a special problem - more info?

That's one of the 'apartments' that came with the AL, I thought it was called mobile home park or something. It has 4 or 5 small mobile type homes. When I play that and someone tries to pay rent sometimes the sim jumps away from the box and it flashes residential before going back to apartment. Small homes up on decking should not make a difference.

I was going to post a question about the mail and trash. Since it's the same topic, I hope it's okay to mention here. I used a community lot house, never used or entered by sims. I changed it to residential, placed the buyable mailbox but can't find the trash can. Since this is UC and the download for collection didn't work at all, I got the one for AL. Any way to get the trash can, or if some one could tell me what area to search for it. I looked in all areas, but it's possible I missed something. Thanks

The bin (trash can) should show up close to it. If you can't see it in your buy cataloge at all, it could be something is hiding it. I had my buyable mail box vanish after downloading a house for my medieval hood (came with lots of cc) I run a GUID check in SimPE as one of the items was overwriting the buyable mailbox due to having the same GUID number. Normally that works well, but since I have a ton load of defaults which also show up as items sharing a GUID number I decided just to pull the lot's cc folder.