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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."
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"
OH so I guess all of that DIDN'T happen.
Thanks Ralph!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Are you willing to pay them more than the combined members of the Direct Marketing Association, who'll crush the USPS like insects if they allow you, the product, to opt out of their service?
Direct Marketers own the USPS, lock, stock and barrel.
And yet Congress gets to set their budget and give them unrealistic unfunded mandates that no business or government agency could hope to achieve (ie funding retirement for workers not yet born).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
In 2010 the USPS brought in $17,300 million dollars from standard mail, there were 117.5 million households in 2010 which means the USPS was paid roughly $147 per household to deliver bulk mailings.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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...
While they don't collect funds collected via taxes, they also don't PAY taxes on many things
See, they aren't that different from other big corporations, after all.
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.
Not entirely true. While they don't collect funds collected via taxes, they also don't PAY taxes on many things, like say property taxes for their offices, sorting facilities, etc. So they indirectly are Government funded, at the state and municipality level.
So they're funded in the same way religious groups and non-profit organizations are funded by the government.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.