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How the USPS Killed Digital Mail

Posted by Soulskill on from the my-mailbox-might-as-well-be-a-recycling-bin dept.

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."

5 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Incomplete by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    1. Re:Incomplete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck.."

      Yeah, be careful with that one. Could be a Cormorant. Buddy of mine found out the hard way and had to pay a hefty fine. Just sayin' ...

  2. Re:Their business model sucked by icebike · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was BEGGING for this service a few years back when I was spending extended periods at sea. I'm sure anybody who goes on extended overseas trips would love it.

    Including Mr Snowden.

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  3. Re:Their business model sucked by mschaffer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Some day, he may be able to get the scans via a FOIA request.

  4. Re:USPS should offer a subscription service by RabidReindeer · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's a good question. As a start, it would be nice to know the number that the USPS is being paid to deliver junk mail to my house. I'm sure I could beat it for my house alone, I'm sure it comes out to cents per month, but we wouldn't know that without knowing the actual amount.

    In 2010 the USPS brought in $17,300 [npr.org] million dollars from standard mail, there were 117.5 [wikipedia.org] million households in 2010 which means the USPS was paid roughly $147 per household to deliver bulk mailings

    So if the above is correnct and I haven't screwed up the math, that would be about 1225 cents per month?