The idea that the Postal Service would have to somehow decide which mail is important to you and which isn’t is silly. It could (and should) be implemented just like the Do Not Call list. I’m on the Do Not Call list, but Ma Bell doesn’t have to figure out which of my telephone calls is important.
The proper way to handle this is to make it a liability for businesses to send mail that runs afoul of the law. As a practical matter, enforcement would be much easier than it is for telephones, because it’s quite easy to obfuscate the source of a telephone call from the recipient, it’s nearly impossible to do so for bulk mail. You have to physically send hard copy evidence to each person, which they can then use to sue you. And if you’re doing it in sufficient quantity, it’d be awfully hard to hide from the post office as well.
Of course, most people wouldn’t bother. But if the proper incentive is offered, enough will sue that it will make illegal junk mailing.
We’d have to accept that doing this could drive up postage rates considerably.
I hope that this sort of change does take place. I’d like to think that we’re moving toward a more permission-based marketing system, in which people opt in to advertising networks that distribute quality ads. Companies like Groupon and Very Short List are awesome at what they do, and I gladly receive their advertising. I’m just opposed to indiscriminate advertising that wins the numbers game by wasting everyone’s time.
I’d rather not pay twice as much to mail stuff when I need to. The post office costs money to run, and they get this money by charging people to mail stuff. To a point, the more people that mail stuff, the cheaper it is.
So I get to send my flat rate box for 4 instead of 8 bucks, because I take the time to throw junk mail in the recycle bin.
And there’s the rub. Switzerland is smaller than the total area of (Vermont + New Hampshire). To send a first-class letter inside Switzerland costs a dollar (US$ 1.00). In the USA, I can send a letter from Maine to Hawaii for less than half that.
I sympathize with the OP when I think of how much paper and how much of my time (yes, it adds up) has been wasted by unsolicited mail over my lifetime. It is infuriating, and one feels that there should be some recourse for unwanted trash being continually sent to your home that you must dispose of. One incredibly obvious solution would be for the post office to not offer bulk rates. I don’t see a downside to this. How is it that loose newspaper-style advertisements end up in my mail box without a stamp on them? Each page should require ~40c postage. If civilians were treated the same as bulk mailers I don’t see this problem existing.
So? I am suggesting that every piece of mail be treated the same, whether from a civilian or not. Just get rid of bulk mail pricing. I am open to potential downsides to this, but I can’t think of any. If a civilian or otherwise wants to send out a crap-ton of mail, he should expect to pay the same standard rate for each and every piece of loose mail.
because that bulk mail is what pays to run the post office. Without, the rates go up on everything to make up for the lost revenue from the bulk mailing.
Not necessarily. There’s no reason to believe that there will be any lost revenue.
Businesses that use bulk mailing presumably have a budget for it. I see no reason to believe that businesses won’t still spend that budget, they’ll just reach fewer people for the same cost. This would mean that they would need to actually target a market segment, rather than cast a wide net.
Yeah, it would be. No other carrier agency can even come close to doing the job as cheaply as the USPS; businesses would still get more bang for their buck with them.
But hey, if a private carrier does pop up that can compete, well, they wouldn’t be bound by the same laws as the USPS and I could just bar them from my property or refuse to accept delivery, couldn’t I?
Yep, but I’ve never seen an unsolicited “letter” here. All the junk mail I have ever seen is leaflets, flyers and free local papers. They are usually not delivered by the Post Office either, but by ordinary people earning extra money.
You are assuming that dollars spent on direct mail must always be spent on direct mail. If the bang from direct mail becomes smaller, advertising bucks will flow to where they are more productive, not necessarily direct mail.
True, but I wasn’t assuming anything, just pointing out there are more scenarios than your post assumed there to be. At present there’s no reason to believe the money wouldn’t continue to be spent on mailers, unless you have some evidence to the contrary.
So half of the mail is direct mail. Losing half of their revenue would not result in a loss of half of their costs (car must still drive to each house 6 days per week). To keep services even, doubling the cost of a first class stamp is not a bad back-of-the-envelope guess.
True, but spark240’s point still holds. Only U.S. Mail is authorized to be placed in U.S. Mail postboxes, and nobody is authorized to make a judgment call about what the addressee wants or doesn’t want delivered. If it gets sent through the U.S. Mail, has adequate postage and isn’t otherwise illegal, neither the mail carrier nor anyone else can interfere with its delivery from postbox to postbox.
The fact that it will become more expensive to reach fewer customers is a good reason for businesses to seek advertising with more bang for their buck.
So the Post Office should still cheaply deliver mail no one wants in order to earn enough money to continue delivering mail no one wants? I mean if over half of the mail is the paper equivalent of ‘increase your dick/bust size’ emails, you gotta wonder how valuable a service this really is or why every single American should be forced to play along.
I wonder if I could convince the post office I don’t live here anymore? Perhaps fill out a change in address or something. I wonder if the USPS has a post office box for their mail fraud division, I could have all my mail forwarded to that.
I send out a fair amount of direct mail. I do NOT use the bulk rates, and instead pay more for First Class delivery. It ensures that my campaigns occur in a timely, and predictive fashion.
My costs break down like this:
44 cents per piece postage
1.06 per piece materials
$50 per campaign handling by my mailer
Plus design costs (in-house, so I don’t allocate that directly at this time).
If you doubled my rate, I would still run campaigns, though I would cut down on the total number of pieces I mail out admittedly. I get plenty of bang for my buck, however, in terms of leads that become prospects that become customers.