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FTC Mail Order Rule applies by Animats · 2011-12-27 12:07 · Score: 5, Informative · on PR Firm Unwisely Tangles With Penny Arcade

The Federal Trade Commission's Mail Order Rule applies here. It's real simple:

Mail orders must ship within 30 days unless there was an explicit delivery date specified. If the seller knows there will be a delay in shipping, they must contact the customer and offer the customer a full refund or the option to wait another 30 days, at the customer's choice.
After 60 days, the seller must provide a full refund unless the customer explicitly consents in writing to a further delay. If the customer takes no action, the refund must be sent.

Staples paid a big fine for this. So did the Beanie Baby people. In the early days of the Internet, a lot of companies were hit by this, because they had web sites accepting orders at high speed, but the back end fulfillment operation was manual and couldn't keep up. Now, most serious online merchants have the ordering system tied to the inventory system, so they stop taking orders when the inventory is used up,

Let USPS fold and go under... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-06 14:29 · Score: 0 · on USPS Losing Battle Against the E-mail Age

Currently you can get shipping materials for free https://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10052&catalogId=10001&categoryId=10000036&parent_category_rn=10000002&top_category=10000002 which is ludicrous. They need to stop giving away shipping materials and charge for it like everyone else does. Countless times I have known of folks to hoard the materials, and use them for shipping using other carriers, or for personal storage. This needs to stop NOW.

Raise the rates on the bulk mail, even if it requires congressional approval to do so. Bulk mail companies already pay way less than the general public to send their spam direct to your box, and at times they receive hefty discounts as well ( http://www.dmnews.com/usps-provides-more-details-on-summer-sale/article/131151/ ) which should be stopped. The First Class postage we pay subsidizes junk mail. It is high time they pay their own way. The ridiculous threat that bulk mail companies will stop using USPS if rates for them are increased is pure bullshit. Call their bluff, and raise their rates, for they can afford it. Do you really think they will start using FedEx or UPS to deliver their junk? The US mail is a government monopoly they must use, due to the cheapness of it when compared to other options. A friend of mine who works in the sorting of US mail told me that bulk mail has steadily increased every year.

Additionally, the Postal Regulatory Commission believes that bulk mailers do not pay their fair share, and that their rates should be increased roughly 22% overall. An audit found that the current rates bulk mailers pay run afoul of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act http://www.prc.gov/PRC-DOCS/UploadedDocuments/ACD%202010_1697.pdf , which is hotly contested by the lobbyists in the bulk mail industry. The current Postmaster General caters to the whims of the bulk mail industry, and needs to be gone.

Create a Do Not Mail registry, which works similar to the Do Not Call registry. Currently I have no way to stop all the loose-leaf flyers/advertisements from infiltrating my mailbox. The sorting and delivery of this bulk-junk takes up a considerable amount of time, including mine. The junk mail problem alone has me flirting with the idea of eliminating my mailbox entirely, for I can pay all my bills, and do all my banking electronically now. Granted, this may cost money initially, but I can dream, can't I?

Granted, there are many problems leading to the current crisis, and I have only touched the tip of the issue. We have to start somewhere.

80% 0f the USPS cost is labor.. FEDERAL-EXPRESS(FED-X) labor cost is 30%.. UNITED PARCEL SERVICE(UPS) labor cost is 40%.. Let USPS DIE, FOLD, GO UNDER.. FED-X and UPS can join-up and start a new POSTAL SERVICE.. Stamps would be about .35 or .40 cents and the mail will be on time.. They could call the new POST-OFFICE.. "FED-UP"... God Bless!

Re:Some ideas by Grishnakh · 2011-09-06 10:37 · Score: 1 · on USPS Losing Battle Against the E-mail Age

Currently you can get shipping materials for free https://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10052&catalogId=10001&categoryId=10000036&parent_category_rn=10000002&top_category=10000002 which is ludicrous. They need to stop giving away shipping materials and charge for it like everyone else does. Countless times I have known of folks to hoard the materials, and use them for shipping using other carriers, or for personal storage. This needs to stop NOW.

Those materials are supposed to be used for mailing stuff by Priority or Express. They probably do it to encourage people to use those particular sizes instead of using their own boxes, because they're probably able to make things more efficient somehow by standardizing the boxes. Why else would they offer flat-rate shipping with those Priority Mail boxes (you can stuff a chunk of lead in there and it costs the same)?

This wouldn't help with people using them for personal storage, but they could simply pass a law banning other carriers from accepting those boxes.

Raise the rates on the bulk mail, even if it requires congressional approval to do so. Bulk mail companies already pay way less than the general public to send their spam direct to your box, and at times they receive hefty discounts as well ( http://www.dmnews.com/usps-provides-more-details-on-summer-sale/article/131151/ ) which should be stopped. The First Class postage we pay subsidizes junk mail.

From everything I've read, it's the other way around. Junk mail subsidizes your first class mail. Junk mail is cheaper because it's so automated, whereas FC requires more human contact. The junk mail senders even pre-sort the junk mail for the USPS by carrier and route. Do you do that with your first class letters? Didn't think so.

The current Postmaster General caters to the whims of the bulk mail industry,

That's probably because, unfortunately, the USPS would not survive without junk mail, as there simply isn't enough volume aside from that to sustain them, at least without downsizing, which Congress won't allow.

Create a Do Not Mail registry, which works similar to the Do Not Call registry.

This would take away the USPS's main revenue stream, and cause them to collapse.

The sorting and delivery of this bulk-junk takes up a considerable amount of time, including mine.

That's the price of having your firstclass mail subsidized, and having a Congress that won't allow the USPS to manage themselves properly. If you really want to do something, start writing your Congresscritter. It's the Peoples' responsibility to hold government accountable.

Some ideas by Thesis · 2011-09-06 03:07 · Score: 3, Interesting · on USPS Losing Battle Against the E-mail Age

Currently you can get shipping materials for free https://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10052&catalogId=10001&categoryId=10000036&parent_category_rn=10000002&top_category=10000002 which is ludicrous. They need to stop giving away shipping materials and charge for it like everyone else does. Countless times I have known of folks to hoard the materials, and use them for shipping using other carriers, or for personal storage. This needs to stop NOW.

Raise the rates on the bulk mail, even if it requires congressional approval to do so. Bulk mail companies already pay way less than the general public to send their spam direct to your box, and at times they receive hefty discounts as well ( http://www.dmnews.com/usps-provides-more-details-on-summer-sale/article/131151/ ) which should be stopped. The First Class postage we pay subsidizes junk mail. It is high time they pay their own way. The ridiculous threat that bulk mail companies will stop using USPS if rates for them are increased is pure bullshit. Call their bluff, and raise their rates, for they can afford it. Do you really think they will start using FedEx or UPS to deliver their junk? The US mail is a government monopoly they must use, due to the cheapness of it when compared to other options. A friend of mine who works in the sorting of US mail told me that bulk mail has steadily increased every year.

Additionally, the Postal Regulatory Commission believes that bulk mailers do not pay their fair share, and that their rates should be increased roughly 22% overall. An audit found that the current rates bulk mailers pay run afoul of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act http://www.prc.gov/PRC-DOCS/UploadedDocuments/ACD%202010_1697.pdf , which is hotly contested by the lobbyists in the bulk mail industry. The current Postmaster General caters to the whims of the bulk mail industry, and needs to be gone.

Create a Do Not Mail registry, which works similar to the Do Not Call registry. Currently I have no way to stop all the loose-leaf flyers/advertisements from infiltrating my mailbox. The sorting and delivery of this bulk-junk takes up a considerable amount of time, including mine. The junk mail problem alone has me flirting with the idea of eliminating my mailbox entirely, for I can pay all my bills, and do all my banking electronically now. Granted, this may cost money initially, but I can dream, can't I?

Granted, there are many problems leading to the current crisis, and I have only touched the tip of the issue. We have to start somewhere.

Re:And nothing of value is lost by cpghost · 2010-05-27 05:17 · Score: 1 · on UK Newspaper Websites To Become Nearly Invisible

I can't imagine anyone with half a brain would be willing to pay for it.

Never underestimate the stupidity of people: there are still some people who buy spamvertized products too.

Re:Yeeeeeehaw! by khallow · 2010-05-05 01:02 · Score: 1 · on Texas Tells Cape Wind "You're Not First Yet"

So what you're saying is you are so bound up in your ideology you're incapable of reading what's actually there, and instead leap to an interpretation that reinforces your ideology.

If that were true, then you'd have a point. And here are more unsupported assertions.

Because the government does some things extremely well. I know that's a shock and against St. Reagan's decrees, but there's lots of history around the world of certain services being privatized and the quality of that service plummeting.

Argentina's water system is an example: when the government ran it, water was much cheaper, it had fewer contaminants, and the water system was more reliable. Once it was privatized, the price shot up, water quality went down and they skimped on maintenance resulting in more disruptions.

While your ideology demands that government-run utilities aren't run well, the reality is they are run extremely well.

The problem with the Argentina assertion is that government was extremely poorly run. They were going bankrupt. The quality of the water supply would have gone downhill anyway. Now maybe the government does run some things better than the private world would. National defense, for example, seems to be one of those things. A water supply does not.

All those companies can't legally compete with USPS's core business

[citation needed]

Wikipedia describes it here.

As to government funding of the postal service, there's a few examples (grabbed via Google) from recent years (here, here, and here). These show both federal funding of the USPS and the presence of remarkably large deficits in the USPS budget.

So, Citibank, BofA, GM, Chrysler, Goldman-Sachs, and JP Morgan are all government entities, then? Or in your mind is it only the monopoly that makes it a government entity, which would mean Verizon, Time Warner and my local power company are all government-run.

What do you think? I think any entity that can privatize profit and socialize risk, such as these organizations apparently can, blurs the boundaries between private world and government. Some other examples are the real estate companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which had a government commitment to honor their obligations.

I don't think your other examples have much merit. Verizon and Time Warner may have monopolies on their means of providing service (land lines, cable TV), but they don't have monopolies on the service (phones, those TV channels, internet, etc). A number of US locations have competitive power providers and hence are not monopolies. There are almost trivial monopolies associated with intellectual property, particularly copyright and trademarks. I wouldn't call Disney a government entity merely because they own the trademarks and copyrights associated with Mickey Mouse and his cartoons.

Most such organizations I would not consider proper government entities because they are privately owned and intended to be run for profit or other privately determined goals. The USPS fails those two tests since it is neither run for a privately determined purpose (the government selects the people who run it) and publicly owned (as far as I can tell, the US government owns completely the assets of the USPS).

Re:Corporations vs. government by mi · 2009-10-13 05:59 · Score: 1 · on FBI Bringing Biometric Photo Scanning To North Carolina, Via DMV

Public schools, USPS, and highways are enough...

You were giving positive examples here, right?

You really think so? Our public schools are constantly derided by all — left and right — for producing rather mediocre results. A particular example:

In international comparisons, American 12th-graders rank in the 14th percentile in math and the 29th percentile in science. The U.S. outperformed only Cyprus and South Africa in general math and science knowledge. Worse, Asian countries didn't participate in the last 12th-grade assessment tests.

Next. USPS sucks and can't pay for itself — needs billions of "bailouts" every once in a while — including right now. Had it not been for the government support, and the government-mandated monopoly (private companies aren't allowed to compete with the "First Class" mail) they would've gone bankrupt long ago.

And highways? Are you really proud of them? Despite insane amounts of money put into them (thanks to the inflated union contracts), an average American spends a week waiting in traffic. For Los Angeles (and, other big cities) the time is two weeks...

Is this — the mediocre results, the constant cost overruns, and pathetic wait times, what you think are "positive examples"? Something you want to see in health care?

New ideas? by Fantastic+Lad · 2008-02-20 00:37 · Score: 2, Insightful · on TR Picks 10 Emerging Technologies of 08

I went and read the various descriptions in the article, and it seems to me that about half of these ideas are not new at all, but have simply been re-labeled. Here's my brief reaction to a few of them. . .

Surprise Modeling: "To monitor surprises effectively, says Horvitz, the machine has to have both knowledge--a good cognitive model of what humans find surprising--and foresight: some way to predict a surprising event in time for the user to do something about it." You mean like weather forecasting? Isn't most, if not all scientific pursuit dedicated to the understanding of natural systems so that we can know what to expect where once we were attributing events to Zeus and such?

Connectonomics: "Lichtman is a neuroscientist, and the image is the first comprehensive wiring diagram of part of the mammalian nervous system. The lines denote axons, the long, hairlike extensions of nerve cells that transmit signals from one neuron to the next; the leaves are synapses, the connections that the axons make with other neurons or muscle cells. The diagram is the fruit of an emerging field called "connectomics," which attempts to physically map the tangle of neural circuits that collect, process, and archive information in the nervous system." --Well that's very nice, but perhaps he ought to examine the role DC currents play in cellular and nervous system activity. Broken bones don't knit back together through the application of electricity for no reason. What else does low-current DC electricity do in the human body? Actually, quite a lot; a fair bit is known about this subject, but that information seems to elude the Dr. Lichtmans of the world. --And why shouldn't it, what with such massive interest in the development of the following technological bonanzas. . .

Wireless Power: "Having difficulty imagining a vast infrastructure of wires extending into every city, building, and room, Tesla figured that wireless was the way to go. He drew up plans for a tower, about 57 meters tall, that he claimed would transmit power to points kilometers away, and even started to build one on Long Island. Though his team did some tests, funding ran out before the tower was completed. The promise of airborne power faded rapidly as the industrial world proved willing to wire up." --Yup. Tesla. And all this time I was thankful he never achieved his goal in this regard. Cell phones are bad enough as it is, which is why I expect out of all these 'emerging' technologies, that this one will be unstoppable.

Reality Mining: "Researchers have been mining data from the physical world for years, says Alex Kass, a researcher who leads reality-mining projects at Accenture, a consulting and technology services firm. Sensors in manufacturing plants tell operators when equipment is faulty, and cameras on highways monitor traffic flow. But now, he says, "reality mining is getting personal."" What? So the massive profit growth of the whole Air Miles thing has up until now been sold simply as a way to keep track of how much milk is left in stock at the local 7/11? Gosh. Who knew?

Other people have commented on the bio-fuels thing, and the fact that we've had Java and Flash for some time now, and anyway I have to leave the house in a few minutes. So enjoy the future. Ciao.

-FL

The official reply from Goodmail by Anonymous Coward · 2006-03-01 17:10 · Score: 0 · on Opposition to AOL's 'Email Tax' Growing

Here is a link to Direct Marketing news and their "take" on it:

http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?artic le_id=35891

I'm posting anonymously as I work in direct email marketing (not spam, I can assure you we're 100% legit) and fear losing my job if they found out who posted this. I got this from an inside source.

Safe Email. Would We Settle for Less
Email is the most powerful communications medium the world has ever known. Anyone can get an email account, they can be obtained at little or no cost, and can be anonymous, an extraordinary attribute in countries where political speech can be dangerous.
At the same time, the easy availability and anonymity of email is the reason we have spam and the far more dangerous threat of financial theft known as "phishing". Not surprisingly, 95% of email users are concerned about identity theft. According to Financial Insights nearly 30% of email users won't open any message from a financial institution. Gartner, a market research firm, reported that approximately 1.2 million U.S. computer users suffered phishing losses valued at $929 million between May 2004 and May 2005.
Last fall, AOL and Yahoo! announced they were partnering with Goodmail Systems in creating a certified email service to address the need for a clearly- labeled safe class of email to restore consumer trust in email messages they expect to receive from carefully-vetted commercial institutions and non-profit organizations. Goodmail's CertifiedEmail is a highly-secure and entirely optional email delivery service that is expected to cost senders a fraction of a cent per message for commercial entities and far less than that for non-profits. Consumers will benefit from assured certification of senders but will never pay anything for the service; it will always be a free benefit to them.
Recently, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other activist groups have coupled misleading, emotional rhetoric with their vast mailing lists in a sadly misguided demand that CertifiedEmail be killed in its cradle. They claim that the very existence of CertifiedEmail will relegate non-certified email to a disadvantaged class. They claim all senders will be charged an "email tax" to have their regular email messages delivered.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Neither AOL nor Yahoo! nor any other email provider would ever do anything to impede the way regular email is delivered without message fees or "email taxes". It's an absurd bit of fear- mongering. Again, CertifiedEmail is a purely optional service for senders who need the extra level of security to assure recipients that both the sender and the message are authentic and legitimate.
AOL and Yahoo! are leading providers of many of the greatest services on the Internet, starting with their email offerings. They operate in a wildly aggressive and competitive marketplace with hundreds of providers of email service. It's completely illogical to think they would make changes to their email services that weren't in the best interests of their members.
While the EFF concedes that consumer safety is important they suggest there is no need for CertifiedEmail, asserting that consumers should simply be better educated to determine for themselves which bank message is authentic and which will strip them of their savings. We think it's ridiculous that consumers should have to play detective every time they sit down to read email. That's exactly why CertifiedEmail was created - to make it easy for consumers to know a message is authentic since few of us are experts in email fraud or have the time to do message-by-message analysis.
Email has moved to the center of our daily lives: we use it to keep in touch with family, participate in groups, make donations, and buy goods and services. The need to restore consumer trust in email and protect recipients from online threats is critica

Re:Indeed, this is the free market at work. by cshark · 2005-06-24 07:59 · Score: 1 · on DoubleClick Warns Against Ad-Blocking Browsers

You really need to be more careful about throwing words around recklessly like that. Just because someone does not agree with you, or they have done more research than you on a given subject does not make them foolish.

You said

"they certainly don't track you across sites"

They've been investigated by the Attorney General and the FTC over it.

According to DoubleClick's own web site (the source):

"DoubleClick does not use your name, address, email address, or phone number to deliver Internet ads. DoubleClick does use information about your browser and Web surfing to determine which ads to show your browser. "

Therein lies the problem with DoubleClick, and the level of community anger towards them. They do track people, they have been doing it for years, and the scope has been increasing gradually. While I'll concede that I haven't heard of them installing spyware, I can't say I would put it past them.

You also said:

"Take a look at Doubleclick's SEC filings and their 300M or so in revenue."

Aside from the fact that you're off on the numbers, why would I? They're a private company?

Oh, and last one:

" They do not throw pop-ups in your face"

Not only do they throw pop ups in your face, they help people get around your popup blockers. Great guys you're defending here.

I think it's important to point out that your defending DoubleClick as though they were the only option. They're not. There are other companies out there that behave ethically and haven't even been investigated once by the FTC or the Attorney General. There are at least three I can think of off the top of my head that are not compiling illegal databases designed to profile the spending habits of every man woman and child on earth. You can choose to work with a company that will be honest, and adhere to their privacy policies, and not exploit you or your visitors without consent. There are lots of companies out there that do will pay you as much or more than DoubleClick does for your space. Or you could do what I do with Microsoft. Nothing. If it works, why would you care how they behave or what they do? Who cares about business practices.. right? C'mon, apathy is actually a nice place to be, but it doesn't give you the right to be an idiot.

Re:Question by yamla · 2005-04-20 07:24 · Score: 1 · on Ameritrade Customer Data Lost

I got the idea that they are not obligated to report loss of encrypted data here.

Impossible Valuation by manmanic · 2004-08-18 00:57 · Score: 5, Interesting · on Google Slashes IPO price

Who knows whether the new (or old) price is a good one? It's practically impossible to put a number on Google's future profitability. There are simply far too many unknowns:

What kind of growth rate will Google see from the Adsense and Adwords advertising networks?
How many millions of people will use Gmail once it finally goes live?
What effect will the built-in search in Microsoft's Longhorn have on Google's traffic?
How much will Google make reselling search to 3rd parties such as Google Alert?

Future successes in any of these businesses could make Google's current price seriously undervalued. And if some key ones fall through, it will have been far too high.

add to the mix: shopping.com just filed for an IPO by websensei · 2004-03-29 04:57 · Score: 4, Informative · on The New Yahoo!, Google, MSN Et Al. Battleground

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Shopping.com is the No. 2 most-visited comparison-shopping site. estimating a $75 million take from the IPO.

dmnews.com article, 3/26/2004

Also by sulli · 2003-11-25 09:54 · Score: 1 · on Spammers Pleased with 'Anti'-Spam Act

You really need to hear what these execs have to say. Don't forget to check out the DMNews website. In case it's slashdotted, try again! Then try again! And if you're not sick of it yet, try again!