Maybe this will make the postal service make it harder for junk mailers to send out junk mail which has the very real effect of filling up finite mail boxes.
It’s not the recipient’s fault that they have a small mail box that will fill up on a long vacation. Junk mailers are a drag, economically, in this situation, in that they pay less than normal rates in order to deliver a service that eats up a disproportionate amount of space and delivers far less than average utility to the recipient than the amount of finite resources it takes up on the part of the recipient, who needs to dedicate resources to either getting a larger mail box (not always possible,) or arranging for cessation of delivery which takes time (and post office resources.)
If the post office is okay with the revenue from the junk mailers, they have to accept the consequences. I just don’t think the junk mailers are paying their share of the costs when you include all of the impacts.
Paste all prepaid envelopes to bricks for mailing.
As pointed out previously in this thread (and several other ones over the years), that does absolutely nothing except waste taxpayers/post office users funds. The Post Office just has to spend money disposing of such trash; the addressee never even knows about it.
Oh boo hoo. That’s the price you pay for making sweetheart deals with snail spammers.
I suppose this is a reference to your assertion “I just don’t think the junk mailers are paying their share of the costs when you include all of the impacts.”
The Post Office says they are.
They state that bulk mailers are getting discounts on their mail because they do some of the post office’s work before submitting the mail. For example, checking addresses against a current list, making sure they all include the full zip code, printing the delivery bar codes on the envelopes, partially sorting them by zip code or even by individual carrier route, delivering them already in trays with all the envelopes facing the same way, etc.
There is a whole price list of how much of a discount you get depending on which of these tasks you do before submitting your mail to the Post Office.
Note that anybody can get these discounts, you just have to have a minimum size (200 letters) and do these tasks on your mail. I’ve done this for organizations sending newsletters to our members. The Post Office rules are quite detailed & specific, but their employees here are quite helpful. (Lots more helpful than people say they used to be. Perhaps the increase in fax machines & emails as alternatives has reminded them that customers are the ultimate boss?)
I think that the Post Office does know the costs of all the steps to sorting & delivering mail, and prices their discounts appropriately. In fact, they contend that the bulk mailers pay more than their share of the costs, and subsidize such mail as Grandma’s hand-addressed birthday card to you.
If you want to argue that the Postal system has been set up to be a mass delivery, automated, centralized system, so obviously the bulk mail process fits right into that, well, I might have some agreement with that argument. But that’s a different topic than this thread.
No, I disagree. The service has not been set up to be a mass delivery, automated, centralized system, since it pushes onto the recipient costs of avoiding unwanted mail and the consequences of not collecting one’s mail for an extended period of time.
It’s not like snail spammers are fly by night, secret operations like emailers are. We know who they are. Why they feel fit to clog my mailbox such that there is no room for legitimate mail tells me something either about their morals, or more likely, the hidden costs of sending the mail that they are not paying, but I am.
The post office isn’t taking into account the economic costs of avoiding junk mail and preparations for long trips, if any.
Let’s see, in my crusade to eliminate my junk mail I spent at least 1/2 hour today on the phone removing myself from mailing lists. I realize (and hope) that I will not have to continue to invest that kind of time every day. Still, if I can bill out my time at $400/hr. I guess that it is becoming a very costly crusade.
Of course, we have to separate business from pleasure. I can’t bill out 24 hours a day so the cost is somewhere in between but it is adding up.
Now that I think about it, my time on the SDMB is costing me a fortune!
But then, let my have my guilty pleasures.