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How the USPS Killed Digital Mail
An anonymous reader writes "In 2013, a startup called Outbox drew a lot of attention for its ambitious goal: digitizing everybody's snail mail. It was a nice dream; no more walking down your driveway six days a week to clear out the useless junk it contained. But less than a year later, Outbox shut down. This article explains how the United States Postal Service swiftly crushed their plan to make mail better. The founders were summoned to a meeting with the Postmaster General, who told them. 'We have a misunderstanding. You disrupt my service and we will never work with you. You mentioned making the service better for our customers; but the American citizens aren't our customers—about 400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our ability to serve those customers.' The USPS's Chief of Digital Strategy said Outbox's business model 'will never work anyway. Digital is a fad.' The USPS wouldn't work with Outbox to forward customers' mail, and that eventually destroyed the business."
They left out the part where the Postmaster General had SEAL Team Six round up the executive team, waterboard them and remand them to the guantanamo detention center where they could learn the error of their ways.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Do you like golf, Mr. Kramer?
Frankly, the idea of a company opening my private mail for me, reading it, scanning it in, then making it available to me bugs the crap out of me.
Were these guys trying to get a contract with the NSA? Or did they just want to read my stuff themselves?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Think about it -- for $n/year, USPS would filter out your junk mail for you. People would pay for this.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
It's called e-mail. What the hell did they think they were going to accomplish?
When I first heard of Outbox (here?), I quickly submitted my email address to them to be notified when it hit my city.
I unsubscribe from nearly every mailing I can manually, as well as use the Direct Marketing Associations's Mail Preference Service and a 5-year blackout from credit card companies.
You can reach all of these from: https://www.dmachoice.org/
---
And I still get junk. They're all assholes.
Officially Government Sanctioned Spam is still Spam.
It would have died of its own accord anyway, because the junk mailers would have figured out that it was a waste of effort and money and found ways to configure their junk mail to foil scanning. And citizens don't want people opening their mail to scan it either.
I can't imagine what there wasn't a three letter agency behind this scheme anyway.
The story is remarkably DATE Free. Without the date in Leno clip you can't tell if this was 1985 or 2013.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
USPS is still about 15 years behind in adopting the Internet. Today in 2014 you still cannot go online and print out a stamped (or unstamped) first class envelope or address label. You still have to fill out silly ink forms to send mail certified, registered, or proof of mailing. USPS has self service kiosks in a few post offices, but not any supermarkets. It's far easier to get a zipcode from a search engine than USPS.com.
USPS needs to just buy Stamps.com for a billion dollars or whatever they're worth, and make it a free service available to the public.
would have been to partner with 3rd party mailbox rental outfits.. not to personally 'undeliver' mail.. that idea was about the stupidest thing i've ever read.
Can now rest easy.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
I do not know anything about the Outbox startup other than what is presented in the linked article, but I do know that this is not an accurate representation of the approach of the Post Office to electronic mail. They considered a system almost exactly like this in the late 1970s. It was called E-Com, and it allowed users to send letters electronically from office to office. The letters were then printed out and delivered.
The Post Office might have its flaws, but from the 1792 Post Office Act to the present, it has actually been an important contributor to the information infrastructure of the United States. This article reads like a press release from the start-up in question.
Just because Outbox didn't succeed at digital mail doesn't mean other companies haven't. Companies like Earth Class Mail have been providing digital mail services since long before Outbox was around.
I would still have a hard time getting too angry with the USPS. Not sure why.... Oh cool, my electric bill can go paperless now.
Earth Class Mail (ECM) has been scanning mail for nearly a decade. And ECM also has a junk mail filtering service. I used ECM up until about three years ago, when the prices got too high. Also I became tired of people calling me thinking I was part of some scam, as all customers had the same street address--14525 SW Millikan Way #NNNNN. So I would routinely get calls from victims because any search for Millikan Way turned up my name and my phone number as one of the top search results.
And ECM isn't the only business with this model.
Outbox must have done something stupid and potentially illegal. For one thing, anybody who uses a commercial mailbox has to file a form with the provider which documents your physical address, in case the G-men need to track you down. I bet Outbox balked at requiring their users have this form on file. (Of course, real scammers can just put another commercial mailbox address on their form. Although you also need to fake a form of ID, or at least lie to the DMV. In any event, it's mostly useless to stop fraud.)
I'm already getting 99% of my mail through emails. Like my invoices from service providers and what not.
The US truly is a backwater country when it comes to the internet...
The only reason you ever want a snail mail, when you need a verify the senders and receivers identity. If you digitize it, it's all lost. You could have made that in photoshop.
who in America, even pre-Snowden, would ever approve the gov't opening everyone's mail and scanning it in. This didn't die because of the junk mailers, this was DOA from a fundamental standpoint.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But they are government sanctioned monopoly.
Run by canada post its called e-post. Only available for certain senders but once you sign up you'll receive an email each time you receive something and then log in to view it. Of course for some of the senders you can just sign up to receive your communications by email and avoid the extra step.
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
You don't need something like this anyway.
1) get your bills electronically, and/or set them up for automatic payments
2) use dmachoice.org and optoutprescreen.com to stop virtually all junk mail (former for 'regular' junk mail, latter for the credit card offers). Yes, they're run by the junk mail companies, but they work, and no, I don't work for them.
That government regulations guarantees that it's a crime for anyone to open my mail
And you are so sure the postal workers have never been asked to take an hour break while steam of men in suits come in with steamers while they are gone...
Surrrreeee. That it's a government agency makes that way more likely to happen than a company like FedEx.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Printed documents have value, particularly financial, medical, and legal documents; scans of them do not.
Getting together for drinks is worth an email or text. Mortgage forms, or the medical history docs I got today should never be electronic.
The fact that these 'genius' innovators missed a solution as simple as a P.O. Box or privately owned Personal Mail Box services, speaks volumes...
Social security and disability checks are why the USPS matters today. They have guaranteed delivery with the force of federal law guarding against interception and tampering. For many, many people, those checks are their lives. Often for good reason, whether it is paying into the system for their entire lives (SSI) or our helping those with serious issues (SSDI). And quite a few of these folks do not have bank accounts or electronic gizmos. Some barely keep their electricity running as it is.
Ask a mail carrier about the "bad" parts of town. You'll find out that the USPS mail carriers are the safest people there. No one will mess with SSI and SSDI checks. The neighborhood would turn them out in a heartbeat.
Rather than continuing to bitch about how your darling child idea didn't work out, maybe you should just come up with something else and move on?
This is getting a bit old...
I knew of Derek Khanna, but didn't know that his skill wielding English was so deficient; if that is now his day job, he should most definitely quit. That was the most poorly written article I've seen at a journalistic Web site in many years.
Before I even moved in, every organization with foreknowledge of the sale apparently sold my information to whoever was paying. My mailbox was PACKED with junk mail in my name before I even moved in! And, it was all targeted (Home Depot, furniture stores, pest control, etc.). To this day, I'd estimate that 60-70% of what I get is junk mail. There's no way these companies can be paying the going rate I pay as a US citizen to mail letters.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
'400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our ability to serve those customers.'
FU
Sorry this really seemed like it had to be inserted in here some place...
e-mail, i like. i don't really like the use of the word mail in e-mail. using the same term that we're using for the postal service. i don't see a lot of overlap between these two systems. one of them occurring in digital fiber optic hyperspace. the other a dazed and confused distant branch of the cub scouts. [ laughter and applause ] bumbling around the street in embarrassing shorts and jackets with meaningless patches and victory medals. driving four miles an hour, 20 feet at a time on the wrong side of a mentally handicapped jeep. [ laughter ] i love how the postal system has this financial emotional meltdown every three to five years that their business model from 1630 isn't working anymore. i can't understand how a a 21st century information system based on licking, walking and a random number of pennies is struggling to compete. what is the reason? [ laughter and applause ] so, they always sent the postmaster general -- he always have to make a big speech about what a tough time that they're having. and he comes out and he's freaked out. he's got rings under the eyes, no shave, pulling all-nighters. we can't do it anymore! we've got to go up a penny on the stamps! there's no way ad ! [ laughter ] we're trying to get some breathing room. the cost and the infrastructure. and we're all like -- hey, dude, do whatever you've got to do. we don't give a damn. what is a stamp anyway? we don't even know what it costs. 43, 48, make it a buck. you're going to get there. you have some money left over, buy yourself some pants and a a real car. [ cheers and applause ] it's like, if i could talk to the post office, if i could say if you really want to be helpful to us, just open the letters. read them and e-mail us what it says! thank you very much!
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
The ones SENDING mail, not those receiving it. Unless you want to start paying to receive mail, in which case get a P.O. Box. The bulk mail senders are the biggest customers and get the most attention. Hence, we get tons of junk mail.
http://blog.outboxmail.com/
I agree completely. Were the founders of this startup really that naive? I could have told them this was a stupid idea years ago. The USPS has two main revenue streams: 1) junk mail, and 2) small packages (they're a big fan of Ebay; they're also working with Amazon now to do Sunday deliveries in some places). They also are a fan of Netflix, and work with them to ship movies faster (the USPS scans the returned movies before Netflix gets them, so Netflix can send your next queued DVD before they get the old one back).
What ever gave them the idea that the USPS would be in favor of screwing over one of their main customers (the junk mailers)?
If you don't like junk mail, think about it this way: the junk mailers are keeping the USPS afloat, and basically subsidizing cheap First Class delivery for everyone.
Printed documents have value, particularly financial, medical, and legal documents; scans of them do not.
I scan and shred every (worth-keeping) bit of mail I get. Period.
Financial? Every financial institution with which I do business (banks, credit cards, stock trading) sends my statements electronically already. Medical document producers annoyingly refuse to send me things electronically, but it makes zero difference whether I know my cholesterol levels because of reading it off a printed page or a PDF. As for legal documents, my 1040 counts as the single most important legal document I deal with each year, and Yes, Virginia, I fill it out and file it electronically, and store only a digital copy of my filing. As the sole exception to that, the deed to my home they physically handed to me at closing - But the paper has no actual value, only the fact that my town office has the transfer of ownership on file really matters.
Physical mail has outlived its usefulness. Let the USPS go under, and we can all move on from killing so many trees in the name of Direct Marketing. The only things I physically receive that I actually wouldn't rather have emailed to me me, I ordered from Amazon.
Smells like bullshit to me.
http://postalnews.com/postalne...
If nothing else, TFA doesn't sound like a particularly unbiased source.
Digital is a fad? In 2013? I mean, I could see someone being sufficiently out of touch to say something like that in 2005, but in 2013? That takes some serious obtuseness.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Here exists other companies doing more or less than same thing: http://virtualmailcenter.com/
These other companies don't complain that the USPS is driving them out of business.
Compuserve in the late 1980s (before they were assimilated by AOL) had an option for email where it would be printed out at a post office near its destination, then delivered by local USPS. Yes, there was an extra charge compared to completely electronic delivery to somebody else who also subscribed to the service, or later on to an internet address, but it was reasonable - a penny or 2 more than the postage.
FWIW, UPS has something they call "Sure-Post" which carries a package by normal UPS means to the local distribution center, then drops it at the Post Office. I can't see who actually benefits from this, since there's no difference in cost compared to UPS Ground and it usually takes a day or 2 longer. But there it is - another case of private carriage interacting with the P.O.
Can someone help me understand why anyone ever thought the 'digitize your mail' thing is a good idea? I mean, if you want to send/receive digital messages, you've already got a cornucopia of options - email, IM, Facebook messages, etc, etc, etc. You can 'scan' stuff yourself by snapping pix with your smartphone, etc. So if you want digital transmission of information you've got that right now, today, without having to go through the extra step of writing/printing it all out on paper and then going to the post office.
Conversely, if I've chosen USPS it's because I don't want stuff digitized. When my young kid makes something Amazingly Awesome for the grandparents I want that physical object delivered to them. Sure, it's an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper with (mostly) scribbles on it, but when the grandparents see that my kid has finally learned how to write their names out it'll melt their hearts, then go straight onto the fridge door.
Even people posting here seem to be mostly talking about ways to remove junk snail mail, not the Incredible Awesomeness of Outbox.
So, remind me again - how is this anything other than a terrible plan that died a well-deserved death?
</rant> :)
Ok, I feel better now
But on a serious note - I would really love some insight about why transforming the USPS into the world's largest scanning service seems like a good idea.
The story of the conversation with the Postmaster General sounds...made up. Oh, I believe that USPS didn't want anything to do with digitizing snail mail. But why would the Postmaster General take this guy as a serious threat? All the USPS had to do was ignore the upstart with an unworkable business plan and wait for it to go away.
Consider: Would snail mail marketers really want a crummy looking photocopy of the original advertising? No way! And documents like bills and agreements were already going totally digital anyway. At the time, money was still hard to send digitally, but banks (at the time) wouldn't have wanted original checks delivered as lousy photocopies.
So USPS didn't buy the plan. The founder of this company couldn't accept failure, so he looked for someone to blame.
Junk mail may be 99% of their income, but it's far from profitable, and 1st class is nowhere near cheap. The USPS involves far too many people, who are paid far too much, and is worse than every union combined to try to get rid of anyone.
"Bulk mail" is pretty much their only customer these days. The general population receives a fair amount, but sends almost none. And the majority of what we receive doesn't need to be paper... I have about 5 things every year that isn't available to me any other way -- and they're all tax BS (1099, 1098, and property tax bills)
Some public libraries tend not to keep very accessible hours. Some are closed on evenings and weekends; good luck getting time off work.
We've had the mail privatized in the Netherlands. We now pay over four times as much for a crappy service, closing of almost all post offices and almost all mail delivery people fired and minimum wage hourly paid people doing their job. It may sound communist, but sometimes doing stuff as a people is actually better than having it dealt with by individuals with more "freedom". Sometimes you need to rely on something so much that you're better off letting government take control than to let free market decide what is going to happen. This is one of those things. We in the Netherlands may scoff on your health care system and your futile attempts to improve it, but we messed up our mail and we're paying for it.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Someone lied to you. When a private business tries to pull the shit USPS did with their retirement plan, someone goes to jail.
What's being required of USPS is that they do what everyone else does - if you promise today's employees that you'll pay them for today's work, but pay them later, you have to actually set aside money to make that payment. What they were doing is telling people working today that they'd get billions of dollars in pay 10, 20, or 30 years from now when they retire. They weren't putting any money aside to fund those promises, though.
When a private employer makes a promise like that, not only do they put money aside, they almost always hand it over to a third party trustee so that the company couldn't even spend the money if they wanted to.
Here's the thing about long term into the future. USPS was decades behind, they were having trouble paying people who worked 30 years ago with money USPS just got last year. Basically, they were 30 years in hole. Congress said that they needed to a) stop getting further behind and b) have a long-term plan to eventually get caught up, so that 30 years from now they'll be paying for work as it's done, not promising to pay for it years later.
No it's not. The problem with USPS is that they have to pre-pay pensions 70 years out. No other Government agency or private company needs to do this, that's purely USPS regulation thanks to Congress. That is their main hurdle, not the unions or employees "getting paid too much" (seriously, do you even know any postal workers?).
That is an outright lie. The USPS has NEVER failed to meet retirement fund contributions and has never been in the situation you describe. The reality is Congress required the USPS to PREPAY 75 YEARS worth of retirement over 10 years. They are being forced to put retirement funds in for employees that have NOT even been born and under the assumption that they will grow employment at 3% per annum for those years. This requirement also does NOT allow the USPS to reduce hours, post offices, delivery or increase stamp prices. It's a deliberate attempt to fool idiots like you into thinking the most efficient business in the US is a failure so the people will allow congress to sell the USPS to fedex and ups for major kickbacks to the republicans. Without that utterly stupid retirement prefunding requirement the USPS was in the black almost 100 million dollars last year.
That whole 70year pre-pay is bullshit. How about reading a few facts from the Congressional Research Service -
"The confusion over 75 years may be due to an "accounting" and not an "actuarial or funding" issue. They only have to fund the future liability of their current or former workforce. This would include some actuarial estimate about the mortality rates of their current workers (I.e. how long they live). So a 25 year old worker would have an average life expectancy (from birth) of 78.7 years. Thus, they would have to project future retiree health benefits for this individual up to about 54 years in the future.
But for accounting purposes they must estimate the future liability over a 75 year period (according to OPM financial accounting guidelines). In this case, they would make some assumptions about new entrants into the workforce and addresses your second question.
Theoretically, these new entrants could include someone who is not born yet. While they have to account for these future liabilities on their financial statements they do not have to fund them if they are not related to their current or former workforce."
Stanford Research Institute had a fax machine precursor in the 50s or 60s and shopped it to the USPS to transmit less-sensitive mail. They got about the same response.
They had issues long before Congress' lame mandate. I stand by what I said... there are far too many people involved in almost every part of the USPS system[*]. Most (all?) of them are paid well more than they should for what they do. And about the only way to get fired is get sent to jail.
[*] except where people are actually needed -- at the counter. I've been in lots of post offices across the country, and you've got to get way out in the sticks to find a post office where there isn't a line of 37 people waiting on the one rude asshole working the counter.
After wiping away the flecks of foam sprayed by the article's writer, I had a few thoughts.
* The US Postal Service is a lifeline service provided by our government. Without a reliable source of communication, it would be hard to sustain such a large country.
* Yes, the junk-mailers have been the major profit center of the USPS for a few decades.
* Vast and long-established laws and rulings forbidding tampering with mail (e.g., opening it) protect this basic form of communication. Such legal protections do not (yet) exist for digital communications. Your email is like a postcard.
* Tons of other companies provide the same "digital mail" service. I use them when I travel. Emailed pics of all letters, they open and scan any that I request, or just send everything to me in a big envelope every week or so.
The article kind of smelled like an ad.
There was nothing revolutionary in the approach of Outbox. The inefficiencies were hard to ignore. Simply a bad and stupid business model. This is what happens when you try to blindly imitate aspects of digital world ignoring the constraints of physical world.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2...
The problem you're having is that you don't understand how memory works. Your brain isn't a tape-recorder. You remember some of the ideas expressed, and then use those to reconstruct the conversation after the fact. Everything you remember is paraphrased. It's not creative license, nor is it a lie. You simply don't remember the precise details.
Here in Sweden many people have 'Ingen reklam, tack' (no commercials, please) stickers on their mailbox. We don't. Instead, we have a wood-burning stove. All commercial mail ends up in there, unread, unopened. While some of the more heavy printed matter does not burn as good - or as clean - as I'd like, most of it is printed on newsprint (a type of paper) and burns just fine, thank you. In theory it might be possible to get them to deliver so much of the junk to cover a significant part of the heating budget here on the farm. In practice we use the stuff to light the fire, no more.
We could place two mailboxes by the road, one marked 'reklam' with a built-in shredder. I'd like to see the face of the mail person who feeds the bundle of drivel in the box, only to hear the thing clearly shredding it to bits for later combustion. The probability of 'real' mail ending up in there (or fingers or ...) makes this proposition less viable, alas.
--frank[at]unternet.org
I really doubt our founding fathers had protecting junk mailers in mind when they penned the Constitution. I don't want to receive junk mail, and I don't know anyone who does. I doubt there even is such a person. Even junk mailers probably hate receiving junk mail. I'm happy to pay FexEX or UPS to carry my mail, they do a fine job and they can get it there tomorrow morning. I only send a few letters a year, and several dollars isn't much in that context. The claim that private businesses can't do parcel delivery as efficiently as the USPS is absurd. The USPS is totally obsolete. We don't need them for anything at all.
This this a trick question? I suppose technically they don't, but for all practical purposes they certainly do.
really? congress said that they should stop getting further behind? wow, me thinks someone living in the biggest glass house ever built should not be throwing stones
Citation for that please. Our postal service offer the same service as USPS, without the added junk. The added junk is actually done by separate private guy going from door to door. I get far far less junk in germany than my US friends living near Atlanta AND I also get my post on time and whatnot.
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visit randi.org
I will gladly pay you tomorrow for something you give me today. Do you understand why they are paying healthcare and benefits 70 years out? What is required is that you actually pay for benefits you provide in the budget that corresponds to when you promise the benefit. If you promise someone pension and healthcare benefits you need to pay for them in that 2014 years budget, not in 2094 years budget when the person is retired and drawing the benefit. You are providing compensation and it needs to be out of this years budget. Otherwise you are saying I will pay you 60k today and in 70 years I will pay you another 200k. The great thing about that 200k is you will not be around to have to pay it.
If I am a politician or executive with a short term focus, I will happily provide benefits that will be paid when I am long gone. I can talk about how there where huge surpluses under my watch and everyone was happy with their compensation.
I have a "Please, No Junk Mail" sign on my mailbox. Works great, and it's free.
Its not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind.
Agreed. And the same people who complain that Congress is requiring the Post Office to be responsible with their pension plan will also be the first ones to complain about how irresponsible XYZ corp or union was when those retirees turn to the feds to bail out an unfunded pension. Maybe the answer is that pensions are the problem and all workers should be responsible for themselves. That removes a whole lot of power and temptation from a few people at the top.
Its not required by the Constitution... Just authorized.
There is a distinction and an important one for those more libertarian minded...
Digital is a fad. Yeah, I can see why they say that, living back in the 90s.
What the USPS needs to do is embrace digital junk mail advertising. Think about what would happen if the USPS became spammer-friendly! They'd make a mint! Especially since people can't just block the sender wholesale, or they'd also miss all their other digital mail delivered by the USPS. Spammers can subsidize the entire USPS!
And let's not forget that the USPS only controls US mail. Outbox was free to do this in other countries. Another "victim" hurt by big bad government.
Agreed. And the same people who complain that Congress is requiring the Post Office to be responsible with their pension plan will also be the first ones to complain about how irresponsible XYZ corp or union was when those retirees turn to the feds to bail out an unfunded pension. Maybe the answer is that pensions are the problem and all workers should be responsible for themselves. That removes a whole lot of power and temptation from a few people at the top.
Actually, if congress would let the USPS use the same rules as corporations use to figure pension liabilities, there wouldn't be a problem. Those rules dictate that you figure the future liability for all retired and current employees. What congress did was make the Post Office estimate how many new employees they will need over the next 75 years and add these yet to be hired employees to the calculation for the pension liability.
Nobody else in the private or public sector is required to do that.
If you get a top of the line Fuji scanner (like maybe $400), you can scan all your mail in 2 seconds flat, and with something like Devonthink, have it all filed too.
Or put it another way, something that's "paid for by" ads isn't the same as "run by" ads
Tech analogy: slashdot, and many other websites. It's supported by ad revenue and optional subscriptions. That doesn't mean advertisers and those who paid a subscription "run" the site.
Sorry dude, but whoever told you that lied to you. In 2001, the USPS pension fund had $0 in it, and they'd promised to pay out $32 billion. You can see it in their annual report:
http://about.usps.com/who-we-a...
Click "balance sheets" and it's at the bottom of page1.
Congress mandated that they start catching up, first by reducing the outflow in 2003-2005, then by actually setting money aside starting in 2006. What was pretty extreme about the mandate is that Congress gave them only ten years to get caught up. That's roughly the same as asking someone to pay off their mortgage in 10 years - it can be done, but it sure isn't easy. That's what all the shouting was about - until the tinfoil-hat crowd started making up complete BS like what you spouted. Of course, there was a reason for the relatively short timeline - it's entirely possible that in the next ten years marketers will largely switch to email and stop using the postal service much. If that happens, USPS will not be bringing in revenue to cover their retirement plans. So the timeline is short, getting caught up is painful, but it would be unfair to their workers to rely on Penny Saver to still be pumping billions into the USPS 20 year from now.
They've done a pretty good job catching up, as you can see in this 2014 GAO report:
http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/...
I don't understand. Why couldn't they have just partnered with "mailboxes etc" or started their own postal box system.
They could have even bought a cheap apartment complex for cheaper than driving from door to door.
With their own postal box system then some mail could be digitized and other mail could be forwarded, picked up, etc..
without permission or knowledge of the USPS.
Looks like you've already got a better business plan that these startup founders managed to come up with.
I have about 5 things every year that isn't available to me any other way -- and they're all tax BS (1099, 1098, and property tax bills)
Where do you live and bank that you don't have online access to 1099s, 1098s, and property tax?
My banks have had online banking for 10 years which includes online copies of 1099s and 1098s.
Same with my city. I usually just toss the 1099s and property tax bills/receipts in the trash because it's
quicker and easier to get them online if I need a copy.
The problem with USPS is that they have to pre-pay pensions 70 years out. No other Government agency or private company needs to do this, that's purely USPS regulation thanks to Congress.
You guys keep saying this but its not accurate.
The law merely required the USPS to calculate their unfunded liability and then go ahead and start funding it. They calculate that unfunded liability based on a 75 year projection (a non-arbitrary duration given by Office of Personnel Management guidelines.) They do not have to fund the retirements of anyone who isnt employed by them yet. If it was based on a 200 year projection their unfunded liability wouldnt change because it continues to be based on the existing promises to existing people, not speculation about future promises to future people.
They were doing pay-as-you-go to cover their unfunded liabilities, which usually works fine so long as their revenue never experiences long term declines. However, demand for postal services has been declining worldwide. Its down 25% globally over the past 7 years alone.
Other government entities that used pay-as-you-go included Detroit, San Bernardino, Stockton, and Central Falls. What you are witnessing is just the tip of the iceberg and its not like you werent warned. Unfunded liabilities in this country will continue to be front page news, and no amount of dishonest hand waving by you makes those liabilities go away.
"His name was James Damore."
You guys keep saying this but its not accurate.
The law merely required the USPS to calculate their unfunded liability and then go ahead and start funding it. They calculate that unfunded liability based on a 75 year projection (a non-arbitrary duration given by Office of Personnel Management guidelines.) They do not have to fund the retirements of anyone who isnt employed by them yet, nor any other obligations that they do not actually have.
They were doing pay-as-you-go to cover their unfunded liabilities, which usually works fine so long as their revenue never experiences long term declines. However, demand for postal services has been declining worldwide. Its down 25% globally over the past 7 years alone.
Other government entities that used pay-as-you-go included Detroit, San Bernardino, Stockton, and Central Falls. What you are witnessing is just the tip of the iceberg and its not like you werent warned. Unfunded liabilities in this country will continue to be front page news, and no amount of dishonest hand waving by you makes those liabilities go away.
When a private entity doesnt fund its liabilities and then has to declare bankruptcy I bet you have something to say about that too, and it certainly isnt in defense of the private entity. I bet the words "stole their retirement" have come out of your mouth much more than once. Here we have a situation where something is done about unfunded liabilities before it becomes an unsolvable problem, at least for one entity, and you are crying about that too.
The requirement to fund their liabilities isnt the problem. The fact that their unfunded liabilities was already over $200 billion before something was done about it was the problem.
"His name was James Damore."
Yes, all of this is true. But lets not pull punches here. Say WHY it's happening.
Republicans are trying to dismantle the USPS so they can sell it off to their business partners and make an obscene profit privatizing an important function of government. As a bonus, they get to destroy the jobs and livelihood of millions of likely liberal-voting unionized public sector employees. Yes. It's both a scam and a vicious ideological attack at the same time.
Considering what the constitution says about the Postal service, I have a better word for what's going on.
Treason.
Note to junk mailers: I use your mailings to start my evening fire-circle fire. They never get read. Ever.
Apparently someone is opening and reading the junk, and replying, or the junk mailers would not continue paying for it. But who are these people? Do you honestly think that the mostly-unmarked mail from an address you don't know, with URGENT being the only identifier...is anything but junk mail?
Bearded Dragon
Wake Co., NC / NC SECU
The end-of-year forms don't show up in the online banking systems. And while you can see and pay taxes online, they require an "online payment code" which is a random 5 digit number on the bill -- it used to be the last 5 digits of the title, but for the last several years, it's been a random number. (and they wonder why so many people never pay their property taxes. They've rolled vehicle tax into your plate renewal, which means no one has any idea how much *cash* they have to take to the DMV, now.)
My former boss used to be Deputy Postmaster General of the US back in the early 1980s.
I can confirm that the customers are those 400 companies and that without them, the Postal Service would go broke.
He mentioned to me, "what do you want, junk mail, or no Postal Service?"
Junk mail is that important to the revenue stream of the USPS. Pretty sad.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
You don't see it listed under assets, but do see it under liabilities because no fund existed - all retirement and healthcare were unfunded liabilities (debt).
Again I'll say, having to make up a $32 billion liability in 10 years sucks. I understand that.
It might have been reasonable to give them 20 years to catch up. (On the other hand, their revenue could dropped by 90% over 20 years 2006-2026, so maybe 20 years would be too long.)
If they have a 20-year-old working in 2014, and they promise that 20-year-old that he'll get some of his pay when he's 85 (65 years later), they do need to set aside a couple dollars from today's revenue to pay for work he did today. That IS 75 years from the time that Congress took action.
It's also exactly what my employer does - when today's young employees enroll in our retirement plan, each pay day money is invested into that plan. They'll collect some of it when they are 85 years old, but they're working for it today, generating revenue today, so we set the money aside today.
Now if Congress would just impose that same discipline on themselves - if they make a promise today, Congress should figure out how they'll pay for it - today.
Please...no wonder you're an AC, you couldn't stand the derision.
the American citizens aren't our customers—about 400 junk mailers are our customers
This paraphrasing is correct in fact, but not in spirit: first, the "junk mailers" are generally American citizens. Second the fact that I don't give a damn if they exist or not doesn't really affect their rights to try to talk at me: it's not the USPS's -- or any government agency's -- job to say what is and is not junk. Third, since the the bulk mailers are paying for delivery, the USPS is perfectly correct: they are the customers, as they paid for service, not the intended recipient.
Fuck SurePost and SmartPost. These two "services" are the worst of both worlds. More expensive than USPS, less reliable than UPS/FedEx/USPS. If you ever lose a package each provider will blame the other, and you will never see it again. You can only track it to the nearest Post Office. The most fun is if you have a PO Box. If your vendor doesn't mention that they use SmartPost, you naturally put in your street address. When the post office gets your box and sees your street address, they return to sender, since that street address doesn't receive USPS mail. Good luck!
I wish people who blather the PO is losing money were aware how the Cheney-Bush admin did all they could to bankrupt it so they could blather "government doesn't work". However the PO works quite well and with cutbacks and other savings will do okay even with the attempt to kill it. Google digitizing all existing books so text could be searched for research. Digitizing mail completely ruins the experience. I have beaitifully photographed laminated cards I send people. Holding them in ones hand is not the same as viewing a digital copy. The people that don't get shouldn't be making the decisions.
Seems to me that a good noise-adding printer wrapped around an encrypted message could be a very interesting way to use USPS for secure communications. Or does NSA want to open physical mail AND solve the Captcha problem just to read my notes to my Family?
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
"In 2013, a startup called Outbox drew a lot of attention for its ambitious goal: digitizing everybody's snail mail. It was a nice dream; no more walking down your driveway six days a week to clear out the useless junk it contained"
Nice, sounds like the submitter is decently rich. Sorry your dream life isn't perfect enough.
Let's be real, Outbox is about making money from scammers who stand to benefit from not having to make official looking mailers anymore.
Wait a minute -- how do they know something is "junk mail"? I get lots of mail that via the mass-mailing rates that I do want to see -- magazines, catalogs from companies I buy from, lots of stuff. I can think of no way to distinguish the good from the bad, especially when something unexpected comes in that I really am interested in, such as an unsolicited communication from a charity that I would like to support.
The whiny article at the link really does seem to at least partially misrepresent the story here. I can't imagine a high-level postal official expressing himself in the way attributed here. "You're not our customer, junk-mailers are our customers"? No, that doesn't pass the giggle test. Apparently, there was at least a bit of paraphrasing & spinning here.
Gut feeling, without having the luxury of having a reliable primary source, is that these Outbox guys completely misconstrued their business model and are now whining about it to try to wheedle sympathy. Really, wtf would think that the USPS would agree to partner with a service that _prevents_ mail from being delivered? Think about it in that context, and the Post Office's position not only makes sense, it's the only position that could make sense. Talk about violating its customers rights.
Furthermore, the customers who would be screwed are the ones that are, to a great ext ent, subsidizing the USPS's mandate to provide local mail delivery to every address in the United States. Closest analogy I can think of is asking NBC to partner with a carrier that provides a service that allows users to filter out commercials. C'mon -- the article here makes this sound like some kind of government conspiracy or failure to support a "disruptive technology." But if you ever actually _read_ Christiansen, you know that he would laugh at this interpretation of his postulates. The guys who ran Outbox were fucking idiots if they expected the old technology to turn over its assets to their new, disruptive technology, simply because Outbox makes a nutty claim that it would save the USPS money (which it clealy wouldn't).
Another example of agenda-driven baloney masquerading as news.
"Digital is a fad" from the USPS, is like Tom Watson (IBM)s quote saying there might be a world market for 5 computers.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
right now, everyone has a good reason to have their real address listed with the government, how else could you get your mail?