8 ms·

I don't think the physical mail problem gets talked about enough. Maybe it varies - because I actually don't have much of a problem with spam text messages myse

by macksd 4y ago

I don't think the physical mail problem gets talked about enough. Maybe it varies - because I actually don't have much of a problem with spam text messages myself - but one of the bigger chunks of my HOA bill lately is the cost of the daily emptying of a large trash receptacle by the mail boxes, because everyone opens their box and immediately dumps 90% of that crap into a shared trash can. What a waste.

nonameiguess 4y ago
I'm my HOA president right now and something that infuriated me is a Texas law stating we have to notify all residents of actions by mail. Nobody reads their mail and nobody should. We're a block of 6 townhouses and my farthest neighbor is 40 feet away. I see these people everyday and can just tell them, yet we're forced to send out a bunch of useless mail destined to be thrown away. We first noticed this when we saw a category of charge from the property manager related to mail. None of us want mail, but the state of Texas forces us to receive it anyway. They also sell contact info to marketers when you apply for a driver's license, so ever since they passed the law saying you can't vote with an out of state ID, that increased my spam levels, too.
- ghaff 4y ago
  So how in general should people be notified of official actions/activities? Just hope they find out somehow? It's not like most people read some local newspaper any longer.
  - sio8ohPi 4y ago
    Email. But really, it shouldn't be on senders to care about how their messages are routed at all. USPS should be able to accept a message, digitally, addressed to a specific individual, and then route it either to an email address or a physical address, per the recipient's preferences.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I don't consider email a reliable/robust official notification mechanism. People have various emails, may or may not check a given email address, stuff gets filtered to spam, etc. It's almost certainly more trustworthy than it was a number of years back but if you want to send me an important notification, I want it to be first class mail.
      - sio8ohPi 4y ago
        The reliability of postal mail is circular. I only bother to check my physical mailbox because it's used for official notices, like ballots, jury summons, and tickets. If I could direct those to email, I'd lose the key and not regret it for a moment.
- site-packages1 4y ago
  HOA actions seem like exactly the sort of thing I should be receiving by mail. I think this thread is referring to not wanting things like "To {YOUR_NAME} or Current Resident" or spam offers via mail, which are a waste.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Right. I'm sure most of would agree that we don't want to normalize robocall phone calls for anything that isn't really immediate and urgent. And failing that, email isn't necessarily reliable (spam filters/changes/getting lost in all the clutter), which pretty much leaves physical mail. So, yes, even if most people will just throw it in the trash I do want to receive notification of town meetings and other official actions that affect me by mail. I certainly also wouldn't want to normalize posting something on Next Door or Facebook to be a sufficient alternative.
- marlowe221 4y ago
  Former attorney here - if you ever end up in some kind of dispute, you will be glad you notified people in writing! I agree, that it's annoying in the meantime though.
- wl 4y ago
  I vividly remember the time my apartment complex scheduled a fire inspection and chose to forego the written notification required by California law, instead replacing it with an email. Too bad their property management dashboard was incapable of sending me email. I got a notification during a meeting with video showing people breaking into my unit. The police (just around the corner!) showed up before I could get home. It was a mess. Don't rely on email for important things.
sseagull 4y ago
I opted out of "pre-screened" offers years ago, and I think that has helped a lot. I did the "permanent" version, but there is a 10-year one IIRC (at least when I did it). https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ https://www.optoutprescreen.com/
- alistairSH 4y ago
  They want my SSN to stop sending me junk mail? What a load of shit.
  - mumblemumble 4y ago
    It's the credit reporting agencies. They already have your SSN/TIN, and use it to identify you in their database.
    - beckingz 4y ago
      Yeah. Companies can purchase information from the credit bureaus and use it to target direct mail. Providing your SSN helps them match you, because it would be SO SO BAD if they accidentally opted out someone against their will.
      - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
        After hearing about a Robin Hood breach where user's SSN is leaked, how bad is it to have your SSN breached? It seems like they could just get everything about you. Total and complete identity theft
        hedora 4y ago
        True, but if you're over a few months old, your SSN has probably already been leaked.
  - pc86 4y ago
    mumblemumble's reply is accurate, and the SSN is also optional. I'm not sure what in your opinion would make it any better.
mumblemumble 4y ago
At one point I got my physical junk mail load down to a trickle by writing "refused - return to sender" on it and dropping it back in the nearest mail box. The sender has to pay for return postage, so that will get you dropped off their lists right quick. Unfortunately, it's high maintenance, and it doesn't take too much of a lapse to get back up to the usual junk load. But I occasionally like to daydream that, if we could get enough people in the USA to do this, the junk mail industry itself might become financially untenable.
- castlecrasher2 4y ago
  >The sender has to pay for return postage, so that will get you dropped off their lists right quick. Actually, returning an unopened USPS-shipped letter or package doesn't cost postage at all. They probably removed you since you essentially took the time to communicate that they're not going to succeed with any future mail.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  I wonder what it would take to create private sort centers: - slap “refused — return to sender” stickers on all the junk and drop it in bins for USPS - bundle your actual mail and deliver it
  - hedora 4y ago
    Oohhh. This could be done without postal service cooperation. Just stamp all the junk mail, and put it in a curbside bin. Once a month, a service pickes it up, then leaves a dumpster of spam next to the local USPS mail drop. (Or shovels it over the counter at the post office.) Also, provide a list of houses subscribed to the service to the USPS. The ball's in their court now!
    - zmgsabst 4y ago
      I don’t think you’d need more than regular business service: - postal worker comes every day, with pre-sorted bins and leaves with outgoing bins; businesses already do this. - first you re-sort the pre-sorted personal mail to remove spam, preserving the post office sort to keep it by customer - then you sort all the removed junk by sender you’re returning to — and when your next mail arrives, you give the USPS worker the pre-sorted outbound mail of returned junk - keep a Instagram of your piles of returned junk mail, every day This already happens with, eg, university or large office mailrooms. So you’re not asking anything new if USPS to make it work.
everforward 4y ago
The waste is a problem, and another big issue is that it undermines the purpose of the USPS. A major reason why the USPS was created and continues to exist is because the government needs to be able to contact people. Taxes, censuses, legal proceedings, etc, there are a lot of times the government needs to be able to contact people. Allowing bulk spam mail to use that channel of contact is contrary to its purpose. It's not a place where I get high priority messages with delivery confirmation to make sure I get them anymore. It's a place where random flyers get stuffed, and the government insists on mixing their messages into that stream of crap. USPS should stop bulk delivery entirely and have FedEx and UPS do it. They're not allowed to put stuff in my mailbox (and literally can't, because they don't have keys). At least then we restore the line. Things in the mailbox are important. Things that get left on my doorstep might be, but probably aren't.
- lazerpants 4y ago
  But USPS is underfunded and according to the source below they made $13.9B from marketing mail in 2020. As long as USPS is underfunded it is a necessary evil. https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/2062562/ https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/2062562/
  - brimble 4y ago
    > But USPS is underfunded and according to the source below they made $13.9B from marketing mail in 2020. I would happily pay (napkin maths) $40-50 more in taxes per person per year to make this fucking stop. Shit, it'd save my city some money. Less trash.
    - potta_coffee 4y ago
      I'd happily pay zero more taxes, and have the USPS properly funded using money that used to pay for overpriced cruise missiles or Navy ships that don't even function.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      I think you're heavily in the minority here.
teeray 4y ago
This is why we don’t have such a receptacle by the mailboxes. It goes in everyone’s home recycling and is dealt with by the ordinary recycling pick-up.
ljm 4y ago
This is one of my environmental bug-bears. How much non-recyclable, glossy paper is wasted on marketing bumf that gets distributed across a whole country only to land directly into the trash, possibly landfill? Even if it was recyclable, it's still serves no functional purpose except to be disposed of. In the UK politicians also send out these kinds of flyers in bulk (never mind the inundation of flyers for takeaway food, Domino's Pizza, Papa John's, etc.) For any single piece of legitimate mail (which is vanishingly small as most stuff is paperless now), there are perhaps 20 or 30 pieces of junk that come with it over the course of a few weeks. I honestly wish it got legislated against. Junk mailers aren't entitled to offload their waste through my letterbox. I don't understand why they have the right to shove advertisements into my own home.
- rolph 4y ago
  in my area, they [junkmailers] actually interfere with delivery of mail, as a postie is not allowed to put anything in a mailbox that cant be closed [for privacy/security] so when the junk carrier shoves it full, your real mail cant be delivered. [adndm] no posties cant [as in not allowed] remove anything, even if they just put it in there and realized its the wrong address
  - xxpor 4y ago
    In the US, no one except actual USPS mail carriers are allowed to deliver anything into a mailbox. Everyone except the tiniest operations take that pretty seriously, since the US postal inspectors (mail cops) are extremely serious.
xur17 4y ago
Agreed. At a bare minimum, I'd love a way to bulk unsubscribe from mailers like this. It's a waste of my time, a waste of money, and bad for the environment.

by macksd 4y ago

nonameiguess 4y ago

I'm my HOA president right now and something that infuriated me is a Texas law stating we have to notify all residents of actions by mail. Nobody reads their mail and nobody should. We're a block of 6 townhouses and my farthest neighbor is 40 feet away. I see these people everyday and can just tell them, yet we're forced to send out a bunch of useless mail destined to be thrown away. We first noticed this when we saw a category of charge from the property manager related to mail. None of us want mail, but the state of Texas forces us to receive it anyway. They also sell contact info to marketers when you apply for a driver's license, so ever since they passed the law saying you can't vote with an out of state ID, that increased my spam levels, too.

ghaff 4y ago
So how in general should people be notified of official actions/activities? Just hope they find out somehow? It's not like most people read some local newspaper any longer.
- sio8ohPi 4y ago
  Email. But really, it shouldn't be on senders to care about how their messages are routed at all. USPS should be able to accept a message, digitally, addressed to a specific individual, and then route it either to an email address or a physical address, per the recipient's preferences.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I don't consider email a reliable/robust official notification mechanism. People have various emails, may or may not check a given email address, stuff gets filtered to spam, etc. It's almost certainly more trustworthy than it was a number of years back but if you want to send me an important notification, I want it to be first class mail.
    - sio8ohPi 4y ago
      The reliability of postal mail is circular. I only bother to check my physical mailbox because it's used for official notices, like ballots, jury summons, and tickets. If I could direct those to email, I'd lose the key and not regret it for a moment.
site-packages1 4y ago
HOA actions seem like exactly the sort of thing I should be receiving by mail. I think this thread is referring to not wanting things like "To {YOUR_NAME} or Current Resident" or spam offers via mail, which are a waste.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Right. I'm sure most of would agree that we don't want to normalize robocall phone calls for anything that isn't really immediate and urgent. And failing that, email isn't necessarily reliable (spam filters/changes/getting lost in all the clutter), which pretty much leaves physical mail. So, yes, even if most people will just throw it in the trash I do want to receive notification of town meetings and other official actions that affect me by mail. I certainly also wouldn't want to normalize posting something on Next Door or Facebook to be a sufficient alternative.
marlowe221 4y ago
Former attorney here - if you ever end up in some kind of dispute, you will be glad you notified people in writing! I agree, that it's annoying in the meantime though.
wl 4y ago
I vividly remember the time my apartment complex scheduled a fire inspection and chose to forego the written notification required by California law, instead replacing it with an email. Too bad their property management dashboard was incapable of sending me email. I got a notification during a meeting with video showing people breaking into my unit. The police (just around the corner!) showed up before I could get home. It was a mess. Don't rely on email for important things.

sseagull 4y ago

I opted out of "pre-screened" offers years ago, and I think that has helped a lot. I did the "permanent" version, but there is a 10-year one IIRC (at least when I did it). https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ https://www.optoutprescreen.com/

alistairSH 4y ago
They want my SSN to stop sending me junk mail? What a load of shit.
- mumblemumble 4y ago
  It's the credit reporting agencies. They already have your SSN/TIN, and use it to identify you in their database.
  - beckingz 4y ago
    Yeah. Companies can purchase information from the credit bureaus and use it to target direct mail. Providing your SSN helps them match you, because it would be SO SO BAD if they accidentally opted out someone against their will.
    - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
      After hearing about a Robin Hood breach where user's SSN is leaked, how bad is it to have your SSN breached? It seems like they could just get everything about you. Total and complete identity theft
      - hedora 4y ago
        True, but if you're over a few months old, your SSN has probably already been leaked.
- pc86 4y ago
  mumblemumble's reply is accurate, and the SSN is also optional. I'm not sure what in your opinion would make it any better.

mumblemumble 4y ago

At one point I got my physical junk mail load down to a trickle by writing "refused - return to sender" on it and dropping it back in the nearest mail box. The sender has to pay for return postage, so that will get you dropped off their lists right quick. Unfortunately, it's high maintenance, and it doesn't take too much of a lapse to get back up to the usual junk load. But I occasionally like to daydream that, if we could get enough people in the USA to do this, the junk mail industry itself might become financially untenable.

castlecrasher2 4y ago
>The sender has to pay for return postage, so that will get you dropped off their lists right quick. Actually, returning an unopened USPS-shipped letter or package doesn't cost postage at all. They probably removed you since you essentially took the time to communicate that they're not going to succeed with any future mail.
zmgsabst 4y ago
I wonder what it would take to create private sort centers: - slap “refused — return to sender” stickers on all the junk and drop it in bins for USPS - bundle your actual mail and deliver it
- hedora 4y ago
  Oohhh. This could be done without postal service cooperation. Just stamp all the junk mail, and put it in a curbside bin. Once a month, a service pickes it up, then leaves a dumpster of spam next to the local USPS mail drop. (Or shovels it over the counter at the post office.) Also, provide a list of houses subscribed to the service to the USPS. The ball's in their court now!
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    I don’t think you’d need more than regular business service: - postal worker comes every day, with pre-sorted bins and leaves with outgoing bins; businesses already do this. - first you re-sort the pre-sorted personal mail to remove spam, preserving the post office sort to keep it by customer - then you sort all the removed junk by sender you’re returning to — and when your next mail arrives, you give the USPS worker the pre-sorted outbound mail of returned junk - keep a Instagram of your piles of returned junk mail, every day This already happens with, eg, university or large office mailrooms. So you’re not asking anything new if USPS to make it work.

everforward 4y ago

The waste is a problem, and another big issue is that it undermines the purpose of the USPS. A major reason why the USPS was created and continues to exist is because the government needs to be able to contact people. Taxes, censuses, legal proceedings, etc, there are a lot of times the government needs to be able to contact people. Allowing bulk spam mail to use that channel of contact is contrary to its purpose. It's not a place where I get high priority messages with delivery confirmation to make sure I get them anymore. It's a place where random flyers get stuffed, and the government insists on mixing their messages into that stream of crap. USPS should stop bulk delivery entirely and have FedEx and UPS do it. They're not allowed to put stuff in my mailbox (and literally can't, because they don't have keys). At least then we restore the line. Things in the mailbox are important. Things that get left on my doorstep might be, but probably aren't.

lazerpants 4y ago
But USPS is underfunded and according to the source below they made $13.9B from marketing mail in 2020. As long as USPS is underfunded it is a necessary evil. https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/2062562/ https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/2062562/
- brimble 4y ago
  > But USPS is underfunded and according to the source below they made $13.9B from marketing mail in 2020. I would happily pay (napkin maths) $40-50 more in taxes per person per year to make this fucking stop. Shit, it'd save my city some money. Less trash.
  - potta_coffee 4y ago
    I'd happily pay zero more taxes, and have the USPS properly funded using money that used to pay for overpriced cruise missiles or Navy ships that don't even function.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    I think you're heavily in the minority here.

teeray 4y ago

This is why we don’t have such a receptacle by the mailboxes. It goes in everyone’s home recycling and is dealt with by the ordinary recycling pick-up.

ljm 4y ago

This is one of my environmental bug-bears. How much non-recyclable, glossy paper is wasted on marketing bumf that gets distributed across a whole country only to land directly into the trash, possibly landfill? Even if it was recyclable, it's still serves no functional purpose except to be disposed of. In the UK politicians also send out these kinds of flyers in bulk (never mind the inundation of flyers for takeaway food, Domino's Pizza, Papa John's, etc.) For any single piece of legitimate mail (which is vanishingly small as most stuff is paperless now), there are perhaps 20 or 30 pieces of junk that come with it over the course of a few weeks. I honestly wish it got legislated against. Junk mailers aren't entitled to offload their waste through my letterbox. I don't understand why they have the right to shove advertisements into my own home.

rolph 4y ago
in my area, they [junkmailers] actually interfere with delivery of mail, as a postie is not allowed to put anything in a mailbox that cant be closed [for privacy/security] so when the junk carrier shoves it full, your real mail cant be delivered. [adndm] no posties cant [as in not allowed] remove anything, even if they just put it in there and realized its the wrong address
- xxpor 4y ago
  In the US, no one except actual USPS mail carriers are allowed to deliver anything into a mailbox. Everyone except the tiniest operations take that pretty seriously, since the US postal inspectors (mail cops) are extremely serious.

xur17 4y ago

Agreed. At a bare minimum, I'd love a way to bulk unsubscribe from mailers like this. It's a waste of my time, a waste of money, and bad for the environment.