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.

Comments

AOL's ad campaigns save you money

[Anonymous Coward]

They pay a lot of money to the post office, and this money helps keep the cost of regular mail, that you and I send, cheaper. If AOL stops, and other companies stop, we'll all end up paying more for our mail. So, I say, keep sending the discs!

Re:AOL's ad campaigns save you money

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about what it costs tax payers for landfills? It's a "pay me now or pay me later" situation. And I, for one, would rather pay a little more postage than the alternative.

Re:AOL's ad campaigns save you money

[AngryPuppy]

I can't say definitively that you are wrong, but I don't think the postal service is a greatly profitable industry. 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 labor cost to process all these has to eat up a large portion of what they charge. i don't know... I'm not confident is helps the rest of the US population with postal costs. It does keep more postal workers in jobs, however.

Re:AOL's ad campaigns save you money

[KurdtX]

Actually, the reason postage is getting more expensive is email. Spammers who used to be dumping millions in to smail can now do so far cheaper over email, so they can send you mail every day for a year for less than it would have cost to send you one smail.

If you actually think about for a sec before using your gut-level reaction to AOL spam, you would realize that it costs the same amount of money to send a postman to every house no matter how much mail he is carrying (yes, I know...). Without spam, they wouldn't have a reason to come to your house every day, and would likely cut back to say, once a week or whatever depending on how many people are actually sending you stuff. Then if something got in a few minutes after he left, you'd have to wait a full week to get it (would you want to wait that long for your Maxim?) because no one is paying him to come by every day. Honestly, the only time I send stuff in the mail is the holidays (1/year), or to backwater places that don't do electronic commerce (rare), or when my physical signature is required.

And really, is paying an extra ~20c killing you that much?

How about just sending them back?

[Junks Jerzey]

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.

Re:How about just sending them back?

[akb]

In general this is a good strategy for dealing with junk mail. Individual returns usually get you taken off the mailing list. It costs the post office more to send it back, if a large enough percentage of junk mail gets returned they'll raise the bulk rate for the junkers. And dealing with the returned mail costs the junkers as well. Just throwing junk out keeps their costs down.

Re:How about just sending them back?

[Sylver Dragon]

I've been doing this for awhile myself. Every time I get some sort of junk mail, I rip it up and put it in the pre-paid return envelope. It may not do much, but its still a few cents more in costs for these companies. Now if I could just get enough people to follow suit...
Unfortunatly, it seems to be too much of a hassle for most people. Come on, people, its a minute or two of your life, and if there are enough of us doing it, it might actually make a dent.

Re:I called them

[mgessner]

On a somewhat related note, my Dad simply writes on the outside of the AOL disk mailer:

"REFUSED DELIVERY - PLEASE REMOVE FROM MAILING LIST"

AFAIK he has yet to receive another disk from AOL (he was getting several a *month* at one time).

He's also dramatically cut down on the number of amount of other junk mail he gets.

Re:RTS them

[RaboKrabekian]

AOl sends their CDs 4th class bulk, meaning that if you try to return to sender the post office just throws them away. AOL won't pay a dime.

Re:Humanitarian aid

[dirtkilla]

I find that CD's really don't make good coasters. That little hole in the middle allows moisture to reach the surface of whatever it's sitting on. Let's rename them from "Coasters" to "Wow put it in the microwave for 5 seconds".

put it on CD-RWs and win the hearts of millions

[mbourgon]

...of geeks. I really wish AOL had put these on CD-Rs or CD-RWs... I think that if you make a buttload of them, it's probably doable. If, everytime you got an AOL disk, you knew you could put another 650 meg on it, would you throw it away? (Maybe). But you'd probably keep them around as spares.

Million Modem march

[bubblegoose]

"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."

How about we follow through on that idea? How about Monday October 28th at 8PM we dial in using the free hours and start downloading huge files, for as long as you can stand tying up your phone line. We can continue every night at 8 PM for the next 2 weeks.

Do that for two weeks...what do you think that will do to the already floundering AOL?

I know you must provide a CC # to sign up, we'll just have to ensure that we all cancel service within the first month. Anyone had experience cancelling AOL service? Is it hard?

I'm sure most of us could find an old machine to do this on.

AOL SPAM IS

[_ph1ux_]

Supported by the USPO. My friend just changed his address, and in changing his address the Post Office sends you a "Welcome to your new Address" package thing. Inside of it was an AOL 1000 free hours disk - with "welcome to your new address" or some such slogan printed on it.

Lame. I dont need the post office advertising my new address to companies (dont knwo if it actually does that though)

But what if you changed email addresses or ISPs and the new ISP or email provider would then send you a welcome email, and you would also receive a bunch of other spam emails from spammers saying "Welcome to your new Email account. Get a bigger penis free by clicking here"

I hope AOL eats it.

But will it matter?

[wls]

As a dumpster diver, let me say that when AOL used to send out floppy diskettes, that when they did a software update they just threw the old labeled and unlabeled media out by the thousands. I have boxes and boxes of rescued AOL floppies that I reformat when I need to pass out a small file over old media.

Given that they treated reusable media with such discontempt, it only makes sense that they are already accustomed to disposing large quantities of non-reusable media.

Will this action even be a blip on their radar? Probablly not, unless environmentalists and the media are dragged into the lot.

Re:What a thoughtless waste...

[stienman]

I realize that. However, if one million people did this the USPS would be none too pleased, and may require AOL to either pay for the additional trash, or use a different rate. It will cost the post office time, money, and space, and they will pass that back to AOL.

Either way, it would be more trouble and more costly to AOL than delivering a million CDs on convenient string spindles to their doorstep. Chances are they'd mount them somewhere as a tribute to their fans who'd go to so much trouble.

Now, if they were going to make art out of this then I'd understand, but I still think the same objectives could be accomplished more efficiently and more pointedly through other means.

-Adam

Seriously, AOL CDs/Disks are sometimes useful

[phorm]

The CD's make decent coasters. If you have some acrylic paint you can paint 'em and they actually look quite cool. Getting a whole crapload of these in a month is annoying though. However, on to use #2

My last AOL CD came with a rather nice thick plastic black case. This case is similar to the ones used with most DVD's. I wish they'd send me more CD's with these cases, as I tend to have a case shortage (buy my CD-R's in 50-packs) quite often. Take off the logo'ed AOL paper and these are great for putting discs in when I lend them to friends etc.

AOL disks. The most useful things that AOL used to send. While I rarely use disks anymore, I used to have a small stack of post-AOL formatted diskettes.

Can anyone tell me where I sign up for more free coasters/cases/disks, I'm running low again?

p.s. AOL CD-holders were also nice for storing disks that you don't want people to pick up, few people open an AOL CD-case.

Re:Old?

[TheEnglishPatient]

Must be the weather . . . .

BBC Radio 4 put out a very old story about Micro$oft on the news this morning. You can read about here
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27688.htm l
(the Register)

N

CNN

[cr@ckwhore]

Does anybody besides me find it odd that this story is being carrried by CNN? Who's going to be there to cover the story when the CDs are delivered? CNN?

Something smells fishy about this...

Homeowner Retalliation

[ReadParse]

I keep considering getting the people who live in our subdivision to do the same thing. All these clowns who think it's effective marketing (it ain't) to put a flier and some little rocks (for weight) in a baggy and throw it in my lawn, just ANYWHERE in my lawn, have another thing coming.

I think it would be really cool to have everybody in my subdivision (96 houses) to contribute these offerings, and we can make weekend trips to the "advertisers" and throw them onto their property.

RP

natural apartment lighting

[Urox]

I've had no previous problem with using the cds as coasters (condensation only happened on the outside of the ring for me). However, that is not my main usage.

I have, in fact, walked off with hundreds of them carefully swiped into a bag from various movie theatres, pharmacies, and book stores (the place where I usually see them in massive cartons full).

Then I proceed to clear-tape them all together and reflect light into my apartment. My apartment gets light only from a single window and sliding glass door on one short side of the rectangle of the apartment. Since it faces south-east, it works rather well to reflect lots of light in.

I'd actually like to do up the whole patio outside the sliding glass door (I've got about a third of it done) but that would involve swiping more handfuls of cds.

Re:I called them

[Denial of Cervix]

AOL CD's are sent presort standard and if you write refused/deceased/etc. on it and put it back in your mailbox, it will get recycled by the post office. I'm a letter carrier.

I'm a recovering letter carrier... I recall seeing clerks at the carrier station spending hours recycling undeliverable AOL disks. Because the USPS has mandatory recycling for all UBBM (Undeliverable Bulk Business Mail - junk mail to endusers), someone gets to make $17/hour tearing the plastic shrinkwrap open, recycling the paper and discarding the disk and shrinkwrap. I swear the USPS must lose money on handling these things, especially as they're not easily automatable, unlike letter mail, which is sorted - with OCR - at 40-60,000 pieces per hour in one machine.

DoC
In almost seven years as a carrier, I wasn't bitten once. By a dog, anyway.