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One Million AOL discs to be returned to AOL
nicedream writes "Two guys from California are trying to give AOL a taste of its own medicine. They're asking people to send them AOL discs, and they're going to drop them off at the company's doorstep once they collect 1 million discs. My favorite quote: "We're going to AOL and say, 'You've got mail"." seems like a better taste would be to dial out and use all 1000 free hours. A million people do *that* and I bet they'd stop filling our mailboxes with the landfill of tomorrow.
I called AOL and asked them to take me off their mailing list. They thought it was an odd request, and the agent didn't know what to do at first. After being put on hold for a couple of minutes they got down my information and told me that they'd take me off their list.
To this day I have yet to receive an AOL CD in my mailbox.
Various links for Slashdotites pleasure
Haikus
No More AOL CD's.com
Fun things to do with AOL CD's
I don't know if this is still true (the last time I used AOL was about '94), but once you started using the free hours, AOL needed a credit card number. Just in case you, uh, go over the limit. What they didn't tell you is that if you did go over the limit, you wouldn't be notified; they just quietly started billing you. Then it was the devil's own work to try and get them to stop, and especially to get your CC out of their database.
If this is all still the case, using your "free" hours is shooting yourself in the foot.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
On the flip side, there are some strange people who collect the various thousands of different AOL discs, like people collect baseball cards or comic books.
l /3 accd753.723,.html
http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/local.pat,loca
Why don't articles actually post the URL to the site?!
http://www.nomoreaolcds.com/
Mail all your unwanted AOL CDs to: No More AOL CDs! 1601 Navellier St. El Cerrito CA, 94530 U.S.A.
1,000,000 AOL CD's would be a measely 50,000 feet.
Just think, if they collected 302,860,800,000 AOL CD's they could stack them and it'd touch the moon!
I saw an interesting e-mail the other day that proposed a solution to junk snail mail. Lots of companies send you junk mail with a postage-paid reply envelope, right? If you take that envelope and stuff it with unrelated junk mail from a different company, seal it up and send it on it's merry way, the junk mailer pays the postage TWICE (once to you, and again back to them), you force them to sort through their mailbox just like you do, and you help out the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service at the same time.
Drop off a million discs in a truckload, and they'll just have someone on the maintenance staff cart them off. End of problem. But if you just mail each disc *back* to AOL, then they'll have to continually weed out all of the discs they get, possibly for years.
Read their FAQ. Here's why:
4. Why don't we just send our CDs right back to AOL ourselves?
Quite frankly, AOL is unlikely to change their behavior without a large public demonstration of dissatisfaction. Getting some of their junk mail back each day will have little if any effect. However, receiving several truckloads of their CDs, all at once in broad daylight, with the media in full attendance, will have a larger impact. Note that AOL sends this stuff out as bulk mail - there's no return postage paid, so writing "Return To Sender" and throwing it back in the mail just makes more work for the Post Office (they have to pick them up and sort them out, then toss 'em in the garbage. AOL will not see that CD or pay any additional postage).
but how much more expensive will it get? how often do you use regular mail anyway to offset the inconvenience of having your mailbox full of marketing crap?
in my country we have some special spam-filter stickers provided by the mail service saying "no unsolicited bulk mail" and it is against the law to drop anything not directly mailed to the mail box recipient. In my building most of the mail boxes have these stickers. Some smartasses still leave something there once in a while, but the amount of trash drops to almost nothing. When I go and check the mail I either have something for me or I don't. No more sorting out useless crap.
And as mentioned in another post, most of these cds will be buried in a landfill or incinerated. Help the environment, help reduce useless crap.
Tell them to mark any and all AOL mail "RETURN TO SENDER" and AOL will bear even greater costs, at no cost to the consumer.
Actually, that won't work. The CD's are shipped 4th class mail. If you mark it return to sender, the post office will return it to the earth. They even mention it in the FAQ
No, it would be just the same as if you threw it in the trash. AOL ships the CDs 4th class mail, which means that if you mark it return to sender, the USPS returns it to the earth.
Does anyone else think it's funny that this article (published by a subsidiary of AOL) doesn't give the URL of the website that they specifically mentioned?
Well, I found it - http://www.nomoreaolcds.com
so there =P
1,000,000 x 15g = 15,000 Kg
15,000 Kg = ~ 16.5 Tons
CD thickness = ~1mm, width = ~120mm
1 stack = 1Km high.
Stacked 3m high = 334 stacks (one with remainer), ~2m to a side
Assuming I've done my math right, that's not going to fit any mailbox I've ever seen.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"I don't think there is a considerable profit margin for waht they mail. AOL ships these things bulk rate which is a reduction from standard mailing."
The more proper term for "bulk rate" nowadays is "presorted," which is why their postage is cheaper than our one-piece first class mailings (they sort so the USPS doesn't have to).
That's the only break they get (unless they do drop shipments, which involves mailing them from post offices close to the destination). It's the same break you and I could get if we went to our local post offices and paid $150 for a presorted mail permit.
"The labor cost to process all these has to eat up a large portion of what they charge."
AOL is doing a good deal of the Postal Service's labor themselves by presorting it. It's called work sharing, which I've heard (but can't confirm) is something unique to the USPS as compared to other post offices.
"i don't know... I'm not confident is helps the rest of the US population with postal costs."
The larger the volume of mail to be moved, the more justification the USPS has for faster but more expensive sorting and delivery equipment. The occasional birthday card to your grandmother is not justification for the USPS to invest in high-speed OCR machines, barcode printers, 18-wheel trucks, airplanes, ships, etc. AOL CDs are.
And as for postage rates, we live in the third largest country in the world and yet we have amongst the lowest postage rates among industrialized nations. Most Europeans, for example, have to pay the equivalent of $0.50 or $0.60 to mail what what we pay $0.37 for. And that $0.37 will get your letter from Puerto Rico to Guam.
No, I'm not a postal worker, I've just been learning way too much information as I prepare to print up several thousand letters to voters in my district.
Our town recycles CDs, and you can, too, through greendisk.com.
Perhaps, but I doubt you can argue against the idea that AOL CDs help keep postage rates low. Why else are we able to send an ounce at $0.37 when the average European has to pay closer to $0.60? For mail within a country not much larger than a typical US state?
Economy of scale is a wonderful thing.
"If anything it causes more overhead."
A million AOL CDs mailed at once causes less overhead than a million people sending a greeting card. In order for AOL to take advantage of presorted mail rates, they have to presort their mail. Part of the $0.37 we pay for a first class mail stamp pays for sorting and barcoding as well as delivery, while AOL does most their own sorting and barcoding, mailing the CDs already sorted in their own trays.
A single CD mailed at first class rates:
$0.37
A single CD mailed at presorted rate (which doesn't automatically include features built into first class like "return to sender" or "forward to new address" and doesn't require the stamps to be cancelled as with first class), presorted by area distribution center (pretty much the first two digits of the ZIP code):
$0.268
Same as above, only sorted by first three digits of ZIP code:
$0.248
Sorted by area distribution center, pre-barcoded and address electronically verified:
$0.219
And the prices keep on dropping as AOL does more and more of the labor themselves, all the way down to $0.12 if AOL
- sorts by carrier route (ZIP+4, more or less)
- verifies the existence of all addresses electronically
- barcodes the addresses themselves
- mails a copy of the mailing to each and every address on the carrier routes ("postal patron" means they don't have to figure out which boxes get one and which don't)
- inserts the CDs into the mail stream at the destination post offices themselves
Now, then, who has more overhead?"An increase in volume through the mail system with mail that very vey few people would actually want."
An increase that justifies the USPS paying for faster (but more expensive) sorting and delivery equipment. If the only people sending mail were the average person sending a single letter or card a week, there wouldn't be any reason (or money) for the USPS to do anything but manual sorting.
"I asked him if he would please just not put that stuff in my mail box. He said... get a PO Box"
What were you expecting? Guess what: the cost of delivering advertising to your mailbox is 100% paid for (by law) by the sender. This isn't e-mail we're talking about here. If the disagreement is between you and the sender, and the sender is the only paying customer between the both of you, why should any business listen to anybody but the person paying them money?
No, I'm not a postal employee, I'm just learning this as I prepare to send out 11,400+ letters to some of the voters in my district.