I check my personal email, but i certainly don’t open most of the non-personal stuff in it. Because snail mail costs a little bit to send, literally no one sends me paper spam daily, and most charities send a manageable amount. And very little of it is totally fake. I never worry that I’ll get a virus by opening a letter. (Maybe i should, but i don’t think viruses live very long on dry paper.)
I decided to stop supporting the World Wildlife Fund because they sent me SO MUCH paper mail. But most of the charities i support send me 3-4 mailings each year, and most “hopefuls” send one or two. That’s manageable. And we are inundated with catalogs only for a few weeks in the fall. I’m constantly going through my email telling companies, legit companies I’ve fine business with, to stop sending me email because they’ll send 3 every week. No, i really DON’T want to know about every sale.
One option is to ramp down home delivery over time; drop a day periodically until you get to 1 or 2 days a week. Align the rate with employee retirements and everyone is taken care of.
I would guess in the case of the USPS this doesn’t save as much as it would seem otherwise they would have done it already.
I believe the problem is that current law requires 6-day a week home delivery.
USPS is in the weird situation of being totally micro-controlled by Congress but completely not funded by Congress. There is no reason the mandate for what must be done and the income to do that work have to match. At all.
The other thing is that PostNord wasn’t quite the same sort of deal as the USPS or Royal Mail to begin with, being a once-public company that was effectively contracted to deliver mail, but not owned or managed by the government.
So in a sense, they’re handing the letter aspects off to DAO, and keeping the parcel business, which is a different story than “The Danish government/post office is ceasing letter delivery”.
(Bolding mine) IMO, you should you should at least open the envelop and make sure there’s nothing non-recyclable in there (like those return address labels charities like to send out) before chucking it in the recycling. I’m pretty sure my city has said you shouldn’t put unopened junk mail in the recycling for that reason, but it’s fine once you’ve opened it and removed anything that’s not recyclable.
I’ve noticed a lot of those “we want to buy your house” guys will include a fake check in their mailers, making sure the words “pay to the order of” are clearly visible through the window to entice you to open it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the bolder the envelope states “RUSH!”, “URGENT!”, “DO NOT DISCARD”, etc., the less important it actually is. Of course some marketers have caught on to that and have started sending their junk mail in a plain white envelope, so you’ll think it might actually be something important.
I actually like getting their calendar every year. That’s the one piece of marketing mail I actually use.
I occasionally use those as well, but I realized I just don’t send that much snail mail anymore, and I’m receiving them at a much faster rate than I use them. So I no longer save address labels, as I already have enough to last me many years.
I am about to renew my US passport by mail. Going to the consulate would be a major pain. Much worse would be if I lived in some out-of-way place. I guess it might be possible to use a parcel service. I also get several magazines by mail. I would not mind if they cut the delivery to twice a week though. But end it? No, no, no.
Are you referring to discontinuing direct-to-home delivery as opposed to community mailboxes? Direct-to-home was grandfathered for older residential areas due to pressure from the union, but has always seemed to me to be wasteful and unnecessary. Community mailboxes are efficient and convenient, IMHO.
And speaking of mailboxes, at some point some years ago when I wasn’t looking, they removed them all and replaced them with little slots in the community mailboxes, where you could deposit a thin envelope but not much more than that. Gone are the mailboxes with the big chutes, except outside of actual post offices. Or maybe they still have them where they still have home delivery.
Efficient and convenient for the post office, sure. I guess i could go to the post office to get all my mail, but that would hardly be convenient for me.
Another reason I open junk mail is to separate out what I’ll recycle, such as return envelopes, and what could potentially be used for identity theft. The worst offenders of the latter are credit card offers, which usually have unique identifiers and/or QR codes. Paranoid? Yeah, but I had a friend who had her identity stolen and I’d rather not chance going through anything remotely similar to what she did.
I have a ridiculously elaborate spreadsheet that I use to track income and expenses, which lists — among other things — both monthly payments and those that occur periodically (such as subscriptions). The Ottlets know where it is, as does my brother who will be the executor. Put together with another document that provides details as to the various payees, it should simplify determining how (and when) to cancel everything that needs to be cancelled. Or at least I hope so.
No, IMHO community mailboxes are efficient and convenient for everyone. They’re strategically located so they’re never more than a short walk away (a short block, at most). The distance to mine is about 100 yards, which is more or less typical. They have secure compartments for mail and small packages. A larger package? No problem, they have several different size lockers and the delivery person will leave a key in your mailbox to the one containing your package. It’s great if you don’t happen to be home to receive a package. The only time I’ve ever had a Canada Post delivery person come to the door is when a package requires a signature.
Yes, i don’t live in a “subdivision". I live in a 50s-style suburb, with lots of twisty little roads and no “community" land except for the streets. There isn’t any place to put a big block of mailboxes like that. And there isn’t anything like an “entrance", so there’s no place i necessarily pass on a regular basis.
The convenience of being able to reach out my front door to get the mail is obviously expensive to the post office. They are requiring all new boxes to be placed along the road, so that eventually the letter carrier could deliver the mail without leaving an automobile. But if we go to “community”, I’m thinking that’s the post office, about two miles away. Which is pretty much the opposite of “convenient”. Enough so that I’d pay for third party delivery of any packages. (UPS, FedEx, etc. all deliver to my door, too.) And I’d rarely fetch my mail at all. That would basically be the end of my use of the post office in any capacity except maybe something like a passport.