Some good points, but I think you're exaggerating. First of all, just wading through the out of office, change of address, and bounces probably costs 10-20 cen

Some good points, but I think you're exaggerating. First of all, just wading through the out of office, change of address, and bounces probably costs 10-20 cents each. Just like spam, if it's costing you 10-20 cents to filter out these emails, you're doing it wrong. A well-trained bayesian system would probably correctly identify 99.9% of these emails. Sure, you might miss .1%, but you're missing 100% now. But answering a real customer email with a real person probably costs $5-$20 depending on the kind of company you are. And if this is the case, you're also doing it wrong. First of all, probably less than 1% of people are going to respond to these emails, especially things like order and shipping confirmations. Of those that do respond (and assuming you've already filtered out-of-office, bounces, etc), you can probably put the rest into one of three buckets: 1. Emails where no response is required 2. Emails where a simple canned response is sufficient 3. Emails that require some kind of action or lenghty response I'm willing to bet that the majority of emails would fall into bucket #2. The best way to handle this would be a system where the CS agents can see the email and select a pre-defined response with a single click. This is going to cost you almost nothing. Again, bayesian systems would help with suggested responses. Canned responses aren't ideal, but they're better than nothing, and they come from an actual human being who can deal with further messages if needed. Responses to emails in category #3 are where you're right: it would cost $5 - 20 to handle. However, these are customers who need real customer service. Your proposed alternative is to bounce their messages and leave them frustrated. That's exactly what we're trying to avoid. Finally, even if Facebook does make $2 / customer, losing a customer costs them more than $2. PS - Your point about monopolies and legally-required notifications is a good one, though more as an example of why government-sponsored monopolies and arduous regulations are bad ideas.