9 ms·

United States Postal Service tries to compete with Google using fear

86 points by nate 15y ago

timjahn 15y ago
This is a perfect example of why the USPS is on its way out. People haven't forgotten about the USPS. They simply naturally no longer have a need for it. We often check our mail once a week! Why? Because we don't get anything useful in the mail. Just junk mail. Once a week, we think "Have we checked the mail this week? Hmm, better go check it." No amount of advertising by the USPS is going to save them. They're not going to magically become useful again because they have TV commercials. It's over.
- firefoxman1 15y ago
  It shows how hostile a dying industry becomes. Looks to me like the RIAA and USPS are in similar situations by the way they're acting.
  - timjahn 15y ago
    Very true, great point.
- roc 15y ago
  To be fair: the USPS is being rushed out the door via a legislative hit job. They've been required to accumulate a reserve of 75 years-worth of worker benefits (retirement and healthcare) -- something I don't believe any other company or government service has to do -- and build up that reserve in 10 years, on their existing budget. So the speed of their decline is greatly exaggerated by this and not entirely reflective of the drop in utilization. Personally, I see no reason the USPS couldn't remain and remain as a useful service if they transitioned to being better at sending/tracking packages as opposed to letters. UPS and FedEx are great and all, but they've nowhere near the customer focus that the USPS has. And in many cases companies offering shipping services already leverage the USPS to deliver useful mail and packages -- it's a great service for them, because they can get the attention that the average citizen cannot. I think there's plenty of room to expand on what works for the USPS, maintaining a useful baseline service for Americans. All that said: yes, their marketing has been atrocious, embarrassing, unhelpful and utterly unnecessary lately.
  - timjahn 15y ago
    I'm aware of the government requirements on USPS but I believe that's irrelevant. The USPS would still be in the decline it is today regardless of whether or not they had to stash away all that money today, 5 years from now, or never. It's simple: people don't use the mail as much as they used to. And that trend is only going to continue. People will never increase their use of the USPS. "UPS and FedEx are great and all, but they've nowhere near the customer focus that the USPS has." I must have a very different experience with the USPS then you. Any time I go to the post office (which now is maybe once every year or two), the employees are extremely disgruntled, not happy that you're there, and not very interested in helping you get what you need done. More importantly, though, in my experience, the USPS is horrible at its core job: transporting and delivering mail. They have "tracking" that doesn't actually track - it simply tells you the package has left the origin and arrived at the destination - nothing in between. Mail is consistently lost, delivered to the wrong address, or opened before delivery (by who knows). Again, this is my experience. I suspect it's not unique, but your mile probably varies.
    - Anechoic 15y ago
      I'm aware of the government requirements on USPS but I believe that's irrelevant. The USPS would still be in the decline it is today regardless of whether or not they had to stash away all that money today, 5 years from now, or never. They would still be in decline, but they actually run an operating profit right now. If/as mail volume further declines they can cut & consolidate facilities to a point where they can still be reasonably profitable. Any time I go to the post office (which now is maybe once every year or two), the employees are extremely disgruntled, not happy that you're there, and not very interested in helping you get what you need done We all have anecdotes. My business uses USPS for shipping packages worldwide and I am a very happy customer of their services. I go to various Post Offices (01139, 06096, 01095, and 01803 among others, depending on my schedule and travel) 6 days a week to collect mail and ship packages. At this point the workers all know me very well, so it may be that my experiences are atypical, but I find them all to be extremely hardworking, friendly and willing to go the extra mile for me - for example, I mailed a letter once and didn't put enough postage on it. One of the postal workers put on the extra postage and left a note in my PO box asking me to reimburse her when I got a chance. But again, these are just anecdotes. However, even when I visit Post Offices I don't normally go to, I'm still largely happy with the services. The only complaint is that sometimes when a Post Office is very busy, I've had employees be curt with me, but in those circumstances I can understand why. They have "tracking" that doesn't actually track - it simply tells you the package has left the origin and arrived at the destination - nothing in between. Wholeheartedly agreed. They need to do better here. Mail is consistently lost, delivered to the wrong address, or opened before delivery (by who knows) I've shipped something like 2000 packages in the last 3 years to all 50 states and over 40 countries. I've had a grand total of two packages lost (and I'm pretty sure that only one of those two packages was actually lost and the other one was just a customer who wanted a free second item).
SpikeX 15y ago
I'm going to be honest here for a moment. I agreed with everything you said, but the disorganized, grammatically-incorrect manner in which you delivered it made it harder to read and understand. Slang writing doesn't get a point across as well as a well-structured, creative sentence with a vibrant vocabulary.
GoldenMonkey 15y ago
It's not good for the environment. Why kill more trees with junk mail?
- mseebach 15y ago
  Sustainably farmed paper (which is practically all of it) is a net gain over not using paper at all. The energy wasted hauling this paper around is a bigger concern environmentally.
  - xinsight 15y ago
    No matter how environmental the paper is, sending paper to people who don't want it is a huge waste of resources.
gerggerg 15y ago
Mail theft exists. In fact it's one of the leading causes of identity theft. And computer viruses? Any one ever been delivered anthrax through email?
- mseebach 15y ago
  And a paper archive was never lost in a fire or flood.
- dwiel 15y ago
  Also, I see way more junk mail in my mail box than I do in my email inbox ...
  - beambot 15y ago
    What about in your spam folder? You sure it isn't just a case of good Bayesian filtering? Cool business idea: Bayesian filtering for snail mail.
    - pavelkaroukin 15y ago
      From what I understand, all spam in mailboxes appear from cooperation of USPS with advertisers, since most ads do not have any address stamped on it. So it looks like USPS actually distribute spam.
- Wistar 15y ago
  Or something from Ted Kaczynski?
- a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
  On the other hand, my email provider has never decided to just throw away my mail because it was too lazy to work its entire shift. Which absolutely does not characterize the majority of postal workers, but it's happened enough to make the news. There's no structural reason for any email employee to cause my email to not be delivered, but there is that structural possibility for a demotivated postal worker.
firefoxman1 15y ago
After being reminded of the "You wouldn't download a car" meme yesterday, I could completely see this becoming the next one.
tvon 15y ago
Is the author equating email with Google or am I missing something?
- grhino 15y ago
  Yeah, the addition of Google in the title feels like link bait, although the author may not have intended it that way. It would have been more honest with email in place of Google. Honestly, stuffing letters into file cabinets makes me cringe. I just think of the impending annoyance of having to sort through the pile of useless information that I'll feel the compulsion to shred while I do it.
angdis 15y ago
USPS blew it. They could have evolved/adapted into different businesses. Not only could they have competed with UPS and FedEX for parcel delivery at scale, but there was (and perhaps still is) an opportunity for an entity to provide 3rd party authenticated email service-- and charge for it. Instead, they got comfortable with merely existing as a junk-mail conduit. Pathetic. Sadly, in the current environment, where the failure of government programs is taken to be virtually axiomatic, the USPS is running out of slack to re-invent itself.
- jonhendry 15y ago
  The main problem the USPS has right now is that Congress a few years back mandated that they put aside money for pensions of USPS employees who haven't even been born yet, let alone hired. FedEx and UPS don't have that requirement.
  - randomdata 15y ago
    It makes you wonder who dreams up this stuff. The purpose of a pension is to defer a percentage of payroll payments until later, to keep operating capital higher during critical business periods. If you just have the money sitting in the bank doing nothing, you can just pay the employees up front and don't need to worry about having pension plan at all.
  - streptomycin 15y ago
    That's not really the main problem. Their projected deficit for this year ($14.1 billion) far exceeds this excess pension payment ($5.5 billion). http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/who-killed-the-postal-service/249508/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/who-kill...
- _delirium 15y ago
  Much of the quasi-independent USPS's attempt to move in a UPS/FedEx-ish direction was blocked by the government. They actually tried to get to the most profitable segment of the market, fast package delivery between major metropolitan areas, before FedEx or UPS did much in that area, but their 1978 proposal for an "Express Mail Metro" service was blocked by the Postal Regulatory Commission.
benedictfritz 15y ago
A refrigerator has never been hacked, but the USPS still can't manage to put my mail into my labeled mailbox instead of my neighbor's.
hammerdr 15y ago
This is something that is very close to my family so I have a bit of experience with how the Postal Service is going. The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii. In this, physical mail is the big equalizer. The USPS is also required to deliver mail to even the most remote of places because if the mail system did not work for everyone then several things would start to break: collecting taxes or votes or anything that a normal citizen should require can be done through mail, at minimum. Really, the only way to replace mail is to provide the same level of reliability and free-to-receive service for another communication medium such as telephone or internet.
- tnorthcutt 15y ago
  The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii. In this, physical mail is the big equalizer. No. They charge the same amount to send those two letters. It does not cost the same amount, however. Regular physical mail delivery at current prices is unsustainable. Period.
  - ppereira 15y ago
    Just interpret "it costs" as "it costs the user" and use the plain English definition of cost as "asking price, market price, or selling price" and you'll arrive at the original poster's intended meaning. I assume that for the second part of your comment, you consider "Regular physical mail" to be letter post, because we will always need packages to be delivered.
  - joezydeco 15y ago
    Regular physical mail delivery at current prices is unsustainable. But it was sustainable when bulk mail and junk mail made huge profits for the postal service and subsidized the first-class prices.
    - 15y ago
sp332 15y ago
It's a federal offense to steal someone's mail out of their mailbox. No such protections exist for email.
- jballanc 15y ago
  This is an excellent point! As "technologists" I think we believe that a meritocracy of technological prowess should decide who survives, but that view threatens to really short sell the social ramifications of such moves. We replaced phones with the internet, but in doing so lost common-carrier protections because we were paying attention to the technology not the law. If we replace mail with email and don't retain the same legally protected status on private communications, we'll have only ourselves to blame.
  - tnorthcutt 15y ago
    s/loose/lost
- adaml_623 15y ago
  I think you'll find that it is a federal offense in your country to hack someones email.
  - sp332 15y ago
    There's no "hacking" necessary because there aren't nearly the same protections (in the USA if you're wondering) on someone's email as there is on USPS mail. To be fair, even laws about FedEx, UPS, DHL etc. mail are less stringent than USPS mail, simply because they're not federal agencies.
- patio11 15y ago
  Title 18 U.S.C Section 1030 (the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) makes it a federal offense to exceed your authorized access on, basically, any computer system anywhere. (Does it communicate? It is used in interstate commerce? BAM.)
  - 15y ago
grecy 15y ago
I live in a small town and recently made a trip to the big city.. I was absolutely amazed at how many advertising campaigns are based on fear. I had completely forgotten about LifeLock, Life Insurance, Home Security Systems, Health Insurance, Car Alarms ... etc. etc. Seeing ads that say "Buy this or else..." completely shocked me. It appears to be quite the norm these days.
- tkahn6 15y ago
  > Seeing ads that say "Buy this or else..." completely shocked me. Why? Those products only exist because bad things can happen. Of course their advertising campaigns are going to remind you that bad things can happen. USPS's business model has nothing to do with safety or security and thus it is shocking to see them using fear to sell their product.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  Playing on your emotions is an important part of marketing. Most successful marketing campaigns to this to some degree.
thaumaturgy 15y ago
The USPS ad isn't completely baseless. We just recently did a virus cleanup for someone who opened up what they thought was a ticket confirmation for their boss in their email. Oops. (Their mail service provider apparently doesn't block zip files containing executables.) There is a lot of confusion out there from people who aren't sure what is and isn't safe to open. The knowledge that we take for granted -- .jpg is safe, .vbs is not -- is completely alien to most computer users. And then there are the scams. And yeah, people still fall for those, too: "But it said it came from my friend! I just thought they had gone on a vacation in France!" We often get calls from people along the lines of, "I just received this message [..], is it safe to click on it?" So in the real world, the marketing behind this ad is pretty sound. On the other hand, we get deliveries all the time and USPS is by far our least favorite. Roughly half of items shipped by USPS are misdelivered at least once before they finally make it to us, if they arrive at all.
- DTanner 15y ago
  > The knowledge that we take for granted -- .jpg is safe, .vbs is not Not always: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms04-028 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms04-02...
- pavelkaroukin 15y ago
  I receive bunch of scam letters in to my mailbox. One looked like official gov printed notification and started with words "You might be subject for 5 years in prison" and then smaller letters "if you prevent delivering this mail". And then actual ads - extend warranty of your car.. Same goes about "won tickets to cruise" with phone number where they offer you to buy something... So in this regard USPS is not better then email. It is just happened that sending bio hazardous stuff is expensive through snail mail..
bcsc 15y ago
I like it, its fairly sensible too.
EGreg 15y ago
This ad is very misguided. Is there really no other reason to use mail? If not, then well ... it should go away lol. I mean honestly ... mail doesn't get hacked? It is a felony to steal other people's mail, or open the envelope and replace it with something else. I can use social engineering at so many levels to replace a letter to someone, or make it go missing, I mean seriously? Come on. Distract the postman as your accomplish slips a letter in...
motoford 15y ago
While this article has some good points, I feel it's advice on how to advertise is misguided. Why does a government mandated monopoly waste money advertising? Every time USPS asks for a rate increase I can't help but wonder how much they spent on Lance Armstrong or the other advertising campaigns. Make your service efficient and reliable, that's your job. You haven't been glamorous since the pony express days (I know thats a myth). I want my mail to be reliably delivered at a good price. I don't want you to be slick or hip.
jdthomas 15y ago
If the USPS wants more usage, rather than marketing, they need to "innovate" just a tad. There is a value-add service that I really wish the USPS would provide. It is very simple too... I would like an abstraction layer for my address. I am still fairly young and move semi-frequently -- every few years. I want a static address that I can give to my bank, DMV, anything that needs to mail me things. This address will auto-forward to my current living address. Thus I will not have to update all my services when I move. It might also be nice to have multiple addresses forwarded to the same location as well; my address and my current roommates. The format of this address could follow PO box style, or they could even invent something new (blah@physical.usps.com). This is something that I think would be easy for the USPS to provide (mail is routed electronically, and I am basically just asking for a lookup table). This would be more difficult for "competitors" UPS/FedEx/DHL to provide, and just might bring more use to the USPS. So why hasn't the USPS done it?
- ericd 15y ago
  Earth Class Mail does this, but I agree, it would be really nice if that was a standard option.
- pork 15y ago
  Hey, while we're on USPS feature requests, this one is a bit overdue: SPAM FILTERING. Allow me to blacklist certain senders, that's all.
- ojilles 15y ago
  Man, I've been searching for this (but I live in Europe, so across country borders, there is no hope unfortunately). Instead what USPS could do is actually scan all this stuff and email me a PDF. 80% of the snail mail I receive I don't need to have physically anyways. For those pieces that need physical delivery -> check a checkbox and USPS could send it to my current address. (Notice how that also solves the addressing indirection?)
  - Lewisham 15y ago
    I'd love this too. A bit of clicking around discovered a company in the UK that does this, but it couldn't look more shady [1]. I'd happily pay USPS $50 a year for such a service, which is certainly a lot more than they'll get in stamps from me. [1] http://www.ukpostbox.com/ http://www.ukpostbox.com/
mncolinlee 15y ago
Okay, I agree with the OP that the Postal Service is acting ridiculous. I've had to reassure elderly people that just because Facebook offered them a too-good-to-be-true offer that turned out to be a virus once, that that doesn't make it much more dangerous than a telephone. Thousands of elderly people are scammed on telephones every year and quietly lose millions of dollars rather than simply catch a botnet virus. Unfortunately for USPS, negative political advertising is all about getting the other side to stay home and not participate. The other side is already sold on technology and won't listen. With that said, the OP's zealous belief that owning a Mac and a firewall makes him immune is comical at best.
logn 15y ago
I'd like to disagree with the USPS that a paper letter has never been infected with a virus. Remember the anthrax and uni-bomber eras?
Karunamon 15y ago
FTA> Can the government acquire private companies? I imagine you could. Take your commercial money you are blowing on this crap, and start acquiring companies doing innovative things with mail. AHAHAHAHAHA. No. It would take a lot to drive me away from Google, but this would definitely be the fastest.
tomkarlo 15y ago
"Mail is so awesome now more than any time ever because it’s so much less full of junk than my email." Maybe it's just because I am almost entirely switched to e-bills, but my experience is totally the opposite. I rarely get spam messages in my gmail account (once a month?) but my email every day is 90%+ commercial bulk mail. Maybe once a week I get a personal letter or other item specifically sent to me. The rest is either catalogs, credit card offers or financial disclosure / privacy disclosure letters from my credit cards or brokerage.
malandrew 15y ago
Why are government services spending time and money with advertising at all. They exist to provide a service to citizens if citizens want it. We're both shareholders and customers. They certainly don't exist to ensure their ongoing existence. This isn't a PSA for the greater good of the country, this is full blown advertising and it should never happen with tax payer dollars. ever. This blows my mind.

86 points by nate 15y ago

This is a perfect example of why the USPS is on its way out. People haven't forgotten about the USPS. They simply naturally no longer have a need for it. We often check our mail once a week! Why? Because we don't get anything useful in the mail. Just junk mail. Once a week, we think "Have we checked the mail this week? Hmm, better go check it." No amount of advertising by the USPS is going to save them. They're not going to magically become useful again because they have TV commercials. It's over.

firefoxman1 15y ago
It shows how hostile a dying industry becomes. Looks to me like the RIAA and USPS are in similar situations by the way they're acting.
- timjahn 15y ago
  Very true, great point.
roc 15y ago
To be fair: the USPS is being rushed out the door via a legislative hit job. They've been required to accumulate a reserve of 75 years-worth of worker benefits (retirement and healthcare) -- something I don't believe any other company or government service has to do -- and build up that reserve in 10 years, on their existing budget. So the speed of their decline is greatly exaggerated by this and not entirely reflective of the drop in utilization. Personally, I see no reason the USPS couldn't remain and remain as a useful service if they transitioned to being better at sending/tracking packages as opposed to letters. UPS and FedEx are great and all, but they've nowhere near the customer focus that the USPS has. And in many cases companies offering shipping services already leverage the USPS to deliver useful mail and packages -- it's a great service for them, because they can get the attention that the average citizen cannot. I think there's plenty of room to expand on what works for the USPS, maintaining a useful baseline service for Americans. All that said: yes, their marketing has been atrocious, embarrassing, unhelpful and utterly unnecessary lately.
- timjahn 15y ago
  I'm aware of the government requirements on USPS but I believe that's irrelevant. The USPS would still be in the decline it is today regardless of whether or not they had to stash away all that money today, 5 years from now, or never. It's simple: people don't use the mail as much as they used to. And that trend is only going to continue. People will never increase their use of the USPS. "UPS and FedEx are great and all, but they've nowhere near the customer focus that the USPS has." I must have a very different experience with the USPS then you. Any time I go to the post office (which now is maybe once every year or two), the employees are extremely disgruntled, not happy that you're there, and not very interested in helping you get what you need done. More importantly, though, in my experience, the USPS is horrible at its core job: transporting and delivering mail. They have "tracking" that doesn't actually track - it simply tells you the package has left the origin and arrived at the destination - nothing in between. Mail is consistently lost, delivered to the wrong address, or opened before delivery (by who knows). Again, this is my experience. I suspect it's not unique, but your mile probably varies.
  - Anechoic 15y ago
    I'm aware of the government requirements on USPS but I believe that's irrelevant. The USPS would still be in the decline it is today regardless of whether or not they had to stash away all that money today, 5 years from now, or never. They would still be in decline, but they actually run an operating profit right now. If/as mail volume further declines they can cut & consolidate facilities to a point where they can still be reasonably profitable. Any time I go to the post office (which now is maybe once every year or two), the employees are extremely disgruntled, not happy that you're there, and not very interested in helping you get what you need done We all have anecdotes. My business uses USPS for shipping packages worldwide and I am a very happy customer of their services. I go to various Post Offices (01139, 06096, 01095, and 01803 among others, depending on my schedule and travel) 6 days a week to collect mail and ship packages. At this point the workers all know me very well, so it may be that my experiences are atypical, but I find them all to be extremely hardworking, friendly and willing to go the extra mile for me - for example, I mailed a letter once and didn't put enough postage on it. One of the postal workers put on the extra postage and left a note in my PO box asking me to reimburse her when I got a chance. But again, these are just anecdotes. However, even when I visit Post Offices I don't normally go to, I'm still largely happy with the services. The only complaint is that sometimes when a Post Office is very busy, I've had employees be curt with me, but in those circumstances I can understand why. They have "tracking" that doesn't actually track - it simply tells you the package has left the origin and arrived at the destination - nothing in between. Wholeheartedly agreed. They need to do better here. Mail is consistently lost, delivered to the wrong address, or opened before delivery (by who knows) I've shipped something like 2000 packages in the last 3 years to all 50 states and over 40 countries. I've had a grand total of two packages lost (and I'm pretty sure that only one of those two packages was actually lost and the other one was just a customer who wanted a free second item).

SpikeX 15y ago

I'm going to be honest here for a moment. I agreed with everything you said, but the disorganized, grammatically-incorrect manner in which you delivered it made it harder to read and understand. Slang writing doesn't get a point across as well as a well-structured, creative sentence with a vibrant vocabulary.

GoldenMonkey 15y ago

It's not good for the environment. Why kill more trees with junk mail?

mseebach 15y ago
Sustainably farmed paper (which is practically all of it) is a net gain over not using paper at all. The energy wasted hauling this paper around is a bigger concern environmentally.
- xinsight 15y ago
  No matter how environmental the paper is, sending paper to people who don't want it is a huge waste of resources.

gerggerg 15y ago

Mail theft exists. In fact it's one of the leading causes of identity theft. And computer viruses? Any one ever been delivered anthrax through email?

mseebach 15y ago
And a paper archive was never lost in a fire or flood.
dwiel 15y ago
Also, I see way more junk mail in my mail box than I do in my email inbox ...
- beambot 15y ago
  What about in your spam folder? You sure it isn't just a case of good Bayesian filtering? Cool business idea: Bayesian filtering for snail mail.
  - pavelkaroukin 15y ago
    From what I understand, all spam in mailboxes appear from cooperation of USPS with advertisers, since most ads do not have any address stamped on it. So it looks like USPS actually distribute spam.
Wistar 15y ago
Or something from Ted Kaczynski?
a_a_r_o_n 15y ago
On the other hand, my email provider has never decided to just throw away my mail because it was too lazy to work its entire shift. Which absolutely does not characterize the majority of postal workers, but it's happened enough to make the news. There's no structural reason for any email employee to cause my email to not be delivered, but there is that structural possibility for a demotivated postal worker.

firefoxman1 15y ago

After being reminded of the "You wouldn't download a car" meme yesterday, I could completely see this becoming the next one.

tvon 15y ago

Is the author equating email with Google or am I missing something?

grhino 15y ago
Yeah, the addition of Google in the title feels like link bait, although the author may not have intended it that way. It would have been more honest with email in place of Google. Honestly, stuffing letters into file cabinets makes me cringe. I just think of the impending annoyance of having to sort through the pile of useless information that I'll feel the compulsion to shred while I do it.

angdis 15y ago

USPS blew it. They could have evolved/adapted into different businesses. Not only could they have competed with UPS and FedEX for parcel delivery at scale, but there was (and perhaps still is) an opportunity for an entity to provide 3rd party authenticated email service-- and charge for it. Instead, they got comfortable with merely existing as a junk-mail conduit. Pathetic. Sadly, in the current environment, where the failure of government programs is taken to be virtually axiomatic, the USPS is running out of slack to re-invent itself.

jonhendry 15y ago
The main problem the USPS has right now is that Congress a few years back mandated that they put aside money for pensions of USPS employees who haven't even been born yet, let alone hired. FedEx and UPS don't have that requirement.
- randomdata 15y ago
  It makes you wonder who dreams up this stuff. The purpose of a pension is to defer a percentage of payroll payments until later, to keep operating capital higher during critical business periods. If you just have the money sitting in the bank doing nothing, you can just pay the employees up front and don't need to worry about having pension plan at all.
- streptomycin 15y ago
  That's not really the main problem. Their projected deficit for this year ($14.1 billion) far exceeds this excess pension payment ($5.5 billion). http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/who-killed-the-postal-service/249508/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/who-kill...
_delirium 15y ago
Much of the quasi-independent USPS's attempt to move in a UPS/FedEx-ish direction was blocked by the government. They actually tried to get to the most profitable segment of the market, fast package delivery between major metropolitan areas, before FedEx or UPS did much in that area, but their 1978 proposal for an "Express Mail Metro" service was blocked by the Postal Regulatory Commission.

benedictfritz 15y ago

A refrigerator has never been hacked, but the USPS still can't manage to put my mail into my labeled mailbox instead of my neighbor's.

hammerdr 15y ago

This is something that is very close to my family so I have a bit of experience with how the Postal Service is going. The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii. In this, physical mail is the big equalizer. The USPS is also required to deliver mail to even the most remote of places because if the mail system did not work for everyone then several things would start to break: collecting taxes or votes or anything that a normal citizen should require can be done through mail, at minimum. Really, the only way to replace mail is to provide the same level of reliability and free-to-receive service for another communication medium such as telephone or internet.

tnorthcutt 15y ago
The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii. In this, physical mail is the big equalizer. No. They charge the same amount to send those two letters. It does not cost the same amount, however. Regular physical mail delivery at current prices is unsustainable. Period.
- ppereira 15y ago
  Just interpret "it costs" as "it costs the user" and use the plain English definition of cost as "asking price, market price, or selling price" and you'll arrive at the original poster's intended meaning. I assume that for the second part of your comment, you consider "Regular physical mail" to be letter post, because we will always need packages to be delivered.
- joezydeco 15y ago
  Regular physical mail delivery at current prices is unsustainable. But it was sustainable when bulk mail and junk mail made huge profits for the postal service and subsidized the first-class prices.
  - 15y ago

sp332 15y ago

It's a federal offense to steal someone's mail out of their mailbox. No such protections exist for email.

jballanc 15y ago
This is an excellent point! As "technologists" I think we believe that a meritocracy of technological prowess should decide who survives, but that view threatens to really short sell the social ramifications of such moves. We replaced phones with the internet, but in doing so lost common-carrier protections because we were paying attention to the technology not the law. If we replace mail with email and don't retain the same legally protected status on private communications, we'll have only ourselves to blame.
- tnorthcutt 15y ago
  s/loose/lost
adaml_623 15y ago
I think you'll find that it is a federal offense in your country to hack someones email.
- sp332 15y ago
  There's no "hacking" necessary because there aren't nearly the same protections (in the USA if you're wondering) on someone's email as there is on USPS mail. To be fair, even laws about FedEx, UPS, DHL etc. mail are less stringent than USPS mail, simply because they're not federal agencies.
patio11 15y ago
Title 18 U.S.C Section 1030 (the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) makes it a federal offense to exceed your authorized access on, basically, any computer system anywhere. (Does it communicate? It is used in interstate commerce? BAM.)
- 15y ago

grecy 15y ago

I live in a small town and recently made a trip to the big city.. I was absolutely amazed at how many advertising campaigns are based on fear. I had completely forgotten about LifeLock, Life Insurance, Home Security Systems, Health Insurance, Car Alarms ... etc. etc. Seeing ads that say "Buy this or else..." completely shocked me. It appears to be quite the norm these days.

tkahn6 15y ago
> Seeing ads that say "Buy this or else..." completely shocked me. Why? Those products only exist because bad things can happen. Of course their advertising campaigns are going to remind you that bad things can happen. USPS's business model has nothing to do with safety or security and thus it is shocking to see them using fear to sell their product.
paulhauggis 15y ago
Playing on your emotions is an important part of marketing. Most successful marketing campaigns to this to some degree.

thaumaturgy 15y ago

The USPS ad isn't completely baseless. We just recently did a virus cleanup for someone who opened up what they thought was a ticket confirmation for their boss in their email. Oops. (Their mail service provider apparently doesn't block zip files containing executables.) There is a lot of confusion out there from people who aren't sure what is and isn't safe to open. The knowledge that we take for granted -- .jpg is safe, .vbs is not -- is completely alien to most computer users. And then there are the scams. And yeah, people still fall for those, too: "But it said it came from my friend! I just thought they had gone on a vacation in France!" We often get calls from people along the lines of, "I just received this message [..], is it safe to click on it?" So in the real world, the marketing behind this ad is pretty sound. On the other hand, we get deliveries all the time and USPS is by far our least favorite. Roughly half of items shipped by USPS are misdelivered at least once before they finally make it to us, if they arrive at all.

DTanner 15y ago
> The knowledge that we take for granted -- .jpg is safe, .vbs is not Not always: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms04-028 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms04-02...
pavelkaroukin 15y ago
I receive bunch of scam letters in to my mailbox. One looked like official gov printed notification and started with words "You might be subject for 5 years in prison" and then smaller letters "if you prevent delivering this mail". And then actual ads - extend warranty of your car.. Same goes about "won tickets to cruise" with phone number where they offer you to buy something... So in this regard USPS is not better then email. It is just happened that sending bio hazardous stuff is expensive through snail mail..

bcsc 15y ago

I like it, its fairly sensible too.

EGreg 15y ago

This ad is very misguided. Is there really no other reason to use mail? If not, then well ... it should go away lol. I mean honestly ... mail doesn't get hacked? It is a felony to steal other people's mail, or open the envelope and replace it with something else. I can use social engineering at so many levels to replace a letter to someone, or make it go missing, I mean seriously? Come on. Distract the postman as your accomplish slips a letter in...

motoford 15y ago

While this article has some good points, I feel it's advice on how to advertise is misguided. Why does a government mandated monopoly waste money advertising? Every time USPS asks for a rate increase I can't help but wonder how much they spent on Lance Armstrong or the other advertising campaigns. Make your service efficient and reliable, that's your job. You haven't been glamorous since the pony express days (I know thats a myth). I want my mail to be reliably delivered at a good price. I don't want you to be slick or hip.

jdthomas 15y ago

If the USPS wants more usage, rather than marketing, they need to "innovate" just a tad. There is a value-add service that I really wish the USPS would provide. It is very simple too... I would like an abstraction layer for my address. I am still fairly young and move semi-frequently -- every few years. I want a static address that I can give to my bank, DMV, anything that needs to mail me things. This address will auto-forward to my current living address. Thus I will not have to update all my services when I move. It might also be nice to have multiple addresses forwarded to the same location as well; my address and my current roommates. The format of this address could follow PO box style, or they could even invent something new (blah@physical.usps.com). This is something that I think would be easy for the USPS to provide (mail is routed electronically, and I am basically just asking for a lookup table). This would be more difficult for "competitors" UPS/FedEx/DHL to provide, and just might bring more use to the USPS. So why hasn't the USPS done it?

ericd 15y ago
Earth Class Mail does this, but I agree, it would be really nice if that was a standard option.
pork 15y ago
Hey, while we're on USPS feature requests, this one is a bit overdue: SPAM FILTERING. Allow me to blacklist certain senders, that's all.
ojilles 15y ago
Man, I've been searching for this (but I live in Europe, so across country borders, there is no hope unfortunately). Instead what USPS could do is actually scan all this stuff and email me a PDF. 80% of the snail mail I receive I don't need to have physically anyways. For those pieces that need physical delivery -> check a checkbox and USPS could send it to my current address. (Notice how that also solves the addressing indirection?)
- Lewisham 15y ago
  I'd love this too. A bit of clicking around discovered a company in the UK that does this, but it couldn't look more shady [1]. I'd happily pay USPS $50 a year for such a service, which is certainly a lot more than they'll get in stamps from me. [1] http://www.ukpostbox.com/ http://www.ukpostbox.com/

mncolinlee 15y ago

Okay, I agree with the OP that the Postal Service is acting ridiculous. I've had to reassure elderly people that just because Facebook offered them a too-good-to-be-true offer that turned out to be a virus once, that that doesn't make it much more dangerous than a telephone. Thousands of elderly people are scammed on telephones every year and quietly lose millions of dollars rather than simply catch a botnet virus. Unfortunately for USPS, negative political advertising is all about getting the other side to stay home and not participate. The other side is already sold on technology and won't listen. With that said, the OP's zealous belief that owning a Mac and a firewall makes him immune is comical at best.

logn 15y ago

I'd like to disagree with the USPS that a paper letter has never been infected with a virus. Remember the anthrax and uni-bomber eras?

Karunamon 15y ago

FTA> Can the government acquire private companies? I imagine you could. Take your commercial money you are blowing on this crap, and start acquiring companies doing innovative things with mail. AHAHAHAHAHA. No. It would take a lot to drive me away from Google, but this would definitely be the fastest.

tomkarlo 15y ago

"Mail is so awesome now more than any time ever because it’s so much less full of junk than my email." Maybe it's just because I am almost entirely switched to e-bills, but my experience is totally the opposite. I rarely get spam messages in my gmail account (once a month?) but my email every day is 90%+ commercial bulk mail. Maybe once a week I get a personal letter or other item specifically sent to me. The rest is either catalogs, credit card offers or financial disclosure / privacy disclosure letters from my credit cards or brokerage.

malandrew 15y ago

Why are government services spending time and money with advertising at all. They exist to provide a service to citizens if citizens want it. We're both shareholders and customers. They certainly don't exist to ensure their ongoing existence. This isn't a PSA for the greater good of the country, this is full blown advertising and it should never happen with tax payer dollars. ever. This blows my mind.