16 ms·

And it's not even limited to online or free. My snail mail is 90% spam even though people have to pay for it to be printed and delivered physically to my door.

by yafbum 3y ago

And it's not even limited to online or free. My snail mail is 90% spam even though people have to pay for it to be printed and delivered physically to my door. I wish I had spam filtering for USPS.

rootusrootus 3y ago
You can reduce some of that. Try this advice: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail
- Our_Benefactors 3y ago
  Wow, PAY them to stop sending junk mail, what a brilliant scam.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    I'd guess that the value they normally get from junk mail over 10 years is more than the $4 processing fee, so I don't think it's a brilliant scam.
    - Our_Benefactors 3y ago
      It is brilliant. Create a nuisance, then charge to remove the artificial nuisance.
celim307 3y ago
Something something junk mail funds a large part of usps
- burkaman 3y ago
  Fortunately there's no need for the USPS to be profitable, so we don't need to worry about this
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    You would think so, but the Republicans have been trying to kill USPS for decades, and have managed to pass laws which both mandate that it pay for itself without taxpayer dollars, and hamstring its ability to be profitable. Some of these hamstringing measures were temporarily removed in 2022 as an emergency measure, but the USPS remains without a guarantee of stable funding in the future.
    - numbsafari 3y ago
      It’s because they hate the actual Constitution.
    - tcmart14 3y ago
      Really shows they don't really care about infrastructure. The markets could collapse and FedEx, UPS, and DHL could go under, but because the USPS is still there, you can still send mail from one coast to another.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      The only thing more inefficient than a purely governmental organization is a private company providing services to the government. There seems to be a persistent belief amonst citizens that governmental services would make them more efficient, more responsive to customers, etc, but following the money suggests different motivations.
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        The reason it is inefficient is because it provides services that a private company would not, or would charge a ton of money for. The USPS has to deliver mail to everyone with a postal address -- they do a whole lot of 'last mile' deliveries for FedEx and UPS, etc. Getting rid of the USPS means that a lot of people would either not get mail or pay out the nose for it. Some things just aren't profitable, and frankly shouldn't be. Let's not forget that.
        3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  As of 2022, marketing mail provides 20% of the funding for USPS. https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2022/1110-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2022-results.htm https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2022/1110-...
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    How much more useful would the USPS be if: - Taxpayer support for the service were increased. - Junk mail delivery were reduced. ?
    - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
      Perhaps even more importantly, what would the environmental impact be?
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        Interesting question. I'm not sure what total junk-mail volume is, but the USPS moved 127.3 billion "units" (pieces of mail) in 2022, down from a peak of 213 billion in 2006. First-Class mail volume was 48.9 billion in 2022, single-piece (which I presume means non-bulk) 12.9 billion. "Marketing mail" volume, 67.1 billion. <https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/ https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/> First-class letter max weight is 3.5 oz (100 g). Assuming an average weight of 100g per item, that's 6.7 million tonnes of marketing (junk) mail, give or take an order of magnitude. A tractor-trailer rig can carry a maximum of about 45,000 lb (20 tonnes). The junk-mail delivered in a year is roughly 400,000 such truckloads of mail. Or assuming 5-day/week delivery, about 2,000 trucks operating daily for a year. (I'm using round numbers as the initial estimate is rough, just trying to give rough scope to the scale.)
- gretch 3y ago
  Federally subsidized advertising platform is what it is
  - CapstanRoller 3y ago
    >Federally subsidized advertising platform That's basically every large industry. Your complaint is about capitalism itself. USPS is not the cause of this.
    - gretch 3y ago
      > That's basically every large industry. Yes, I'm against federal subsidies in many industries. If it's a public messaging system such as USPS, why does it deliver so much spam? How about we just pay for it and stop that part? Everyone loves that with Fastmail vs Gmail - how about we do it for our national message passing? > capitalism How did you arrive at capitalism when I criticized federal funding? You think the idea of a federal govt and paying for stuff with public taxes is a core pillar of capitalism?
Semaphor 3y ago
In Germany, a sticker saying "no ads or free newspapers" is legally binding, repeated violations are quickly fined. It's opt out, but great otherwise.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  Same in Norway. And it works. Ditto for cold calling.
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    I think cold calling is generally forbidden? At least I never got any non scam calls.
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      Yes and no. If the caller has an existing relationship with the customer they can always call you. So your bank can call you. There is a register "Reservasjon mot telefonsalg og adressert reklame" that you can put you mobile number, etc., on and everyone who might call is obliged to update their own records from it monthly so that they avoid calling anyone on the register. I very occasionally, perhaps once every year or two, get cold called in Norway but now they are always from offshore. A few years ago I got a couple of cold calls from Norwegian companies but when I pointed out that I had registered all the family's mobile numbers with Brønnøysund [1] they apologized and that was the last I heard from them. [1] https://www.altinn.no/skjemaoversikt/bronnoysundregistrene/reservasjon-mot-telefonsalg-og-adressert-reklame/ https://www.altinn.no/skjemaoversikt/bronnoysundregistrene/r...
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    Speaking of which, wasn't there supposed to be a crackdown in the US? Something about the SHAKEN/STIR protocols? I'm still getting loads of spam calls, does anyone know where things got held up?
    - kelnos 3y ago
dredmorbius 3y ago
The USPS states that any mail may be refused. Note that it only lists some but not all available methods: <https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remove-name-from-mailing-lists https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remo...> From the old Junkbusters site, there is a Form 1500 which can be filed against any sender: <https://web.archive.org/web/19970713104642/http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/self.html#prohibit https://web.archive.org/web/19970713104642/http://www.junkbu...> Form 1500, "Application for Listing and/or Prohibitory Order": <https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1500.pdf https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1500.pdf> Though specified as against "sexually-oriented" material, that has been deemed by courts to be at the sole judgement of the mail recipient. You can also directly contact bulk senders through the DMA mail preference service, Valpack, RedPlum, and others. See one listing of these here: <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-stop-junk-mail_n_5b27beb7e4b056b2263c5b54 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-stop-junk-mail_n_5b27b...> The Form 1500 is the take-off-and-nuke-it-from-orbit option, however.
- dimal 3y ago
  The question I have is, why does the USPS provide a discount for bulk mail at all? Sending bulk mail is less than half the price if a regular letter. It’s basically a subsidized door-to-door garbage delivery. My recycling bin is right next to my mailbox, and my daily routine is removing the garbage from my mailbox and putting it in the bin. Such a ridiculous waste. And it’s my responsibility to opt out of this nonsense? Make it more expensive to send and maybe that will reduce the crap being sent.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > why does the USPS provide a discount for bulk mail at all? Because as a condition of the discount, it is presorted by ZIP code, eliminating a significant part of the labor cost of processing it.
    - cma 3y ago
      But why not heavily tax it?
emodendroket 3y ago
Somehow I find junk mail a lot less bothersome to sort through.
bogidon 3y ago
Chiming in with something I've posted in the past that I've found reduced about 80% of this spam mail and only takes 10 minutes to set up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31070730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31070730

by yafbum 3y ago

And it's not even limited to online or free. My snail mail is 90% spam even though people have to pay for it to be printed and delivered physically to my door. I wish I had spam filtering for USPS.

rootusrootus 3y ago

You can reduce some of that. Try this advice: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail

Our_Benefactors 3y ago
Wow, PAY them to stop sending junk mail, what a brilliant scam.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I'd guess that the value they normally get from junk mail over 10 years is more than the $4 processing fee, so I don't think it's a brilliant scam.
  - Our_Benefactors 3y ago
    It is brilliant. Create a nuisance, then charge to remove the artificial nuisance.

celim307 3y ago

Something something junk mail funds a large part of usps

burkaman 3y ago
Fortunately there's no need for the USPS to be profitable, so we don't need to worry about this
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  You would think so, but the Republicans have been trying to kill USPS for decades, and have managed to pass laws which both mandate that it pay for itself without taxpayer dollars, and hamstring its ability to be profitable. Some of these hamstringing measures were temporarily removed in 2022 as an emergency measure, but the USPS remains without a guarantee of stable funding in the future.
  - numbsafari 3y ago
    It’s because they hate the actual Constitution.
  - tcmart14 3y ago
    Really shows they don't really care about infrastructure. The markets could collapse and FedEx, UPS, and DHL could go under, but because the USPS is still there, you can still send mail from one coast to another.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    The only thing more inefficient than a purely governmental organization is a private company providing services to the government. There seems to be a persistent belief amonst citizens that governmental services would make them more efficient, more responsive to customers, etc, but following the money suggests different motivations.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      The reason it is inefficient is because it provides services that a private company would not, or would charge a ton of money for. The USPS has to deliver mail to everyone with a postal address -- they do a whole lot of 'last mile' deliveries for FedEx and UPS, etc. Getting rid of the USPS means that a lot of people would either not get mail or pay out the nose for it. Some things just aren't profitable, and frankly shouldn't be. Let's not forget that.
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rootusrootus 3y ago
As of 2022, marketing mail provides 20% of the funding for USPS. https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2022/1110-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2022-results.htm https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2022/1110-...
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  How much more useful would the USPS be if: - Taxpayer support for the service were increased. - Junk mail delivery were reduced. ?
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    Perhaps even more importantly, what would the environmental impact be?
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      Interesting question. I'm not sure what total junk-mail volume is, but the USPS moved 127.3 billion "units" (pieces of mail) in 2022, down from a peak of 213 billion in 2006. First-Class mail volume was 48.9 billion in 2022, single-piece (which I presume means non-bulk) 12.9 billion. "Marketing mail" volume, 67.1 billion. <https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/ https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/> First-class letter max weight is 3.5 oz (100 g). Assuming an average weight of 100g per item, that's 6.7 million tonnes of marketing (junk) mail, give or take an order of magnitude. A tractor-trailer rig can carry a maximum of about 45,000 lb (20 tonnes). The junk-mail delivered in a year is roughly 400,000 such truckloads of mail. Or assuming 5-day/week delivery, about 2,000 trucks operating daily for a year. (I'm using round numbers as the initial estimate is rough, just trying to give rough scope to the scale.)
gretch 3y ago
Federally subsidized advertising platform is what it is
- CapstanRoller 3y ago
  >Federally subsidized advertising platform That's basically every large industry. Your complaint is about capitalism itself. USPS is not the cause of this.
  - gretch 3y ago
    > That's basically every large industry. Yes, I'm against federal subsidies in many industries. If it's a public messaging system such as USPS, why does it deliver so much spam? How about we just pay for it and stop that part? Everyone loves that with Fastmail vs Gmail - how about we do it for our national message passing? > capitalism How did you arrive at capitalism when I criticized federal funding? You think the idea of a federal govt and paying for stuff with public taxes is a core pillar of capitalism?

Semaphor 3y ago

In Germany, a sticker saying "no ads or free newspapers" is legally binding, repeated violations are quickly fined. It's opt out, but great otherwise.

kwhitefoot 3y ago
Same in Norway. And it works. Ditto for cold calling.
- Semaphor 3y ago
  I think cold calling is generally forbidden? At least I never got any non scam calls.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    Yes and no. If the caller has an existing relationship with the customer they can always call you. So your bank can call you. There is a register "Reservasjon mot telefonsalg og adressert reklame" that you can put you mobile number, etc., on and everyone who might call is obliged to update their own records from it monthly so that they avoid calling anyone on the register. I very occasionally, perhaps once every year or two, get cold called in Norway but now they are always from offshore. A few years ago I got a couple of cold calls from Norwegian companies but when I pointed out that I had registered all the family's mobile numbers with Brønnøysund [1] they apologized and that was the last I heard from them. [1] https://www.altinn.no/skjemaoversikt/bronnoysundregistrene/reservasjon-mot-telefonsalg-og-adressert-reklame/ https://www.altinn.no/skjemaoversikt/bronnoysundregistrene/r...
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Speaking of which, wasn't there supposed to be a crackdown in the US? Something about the SHAKEN/STIR protocols? I'm still getting loads of spam calls, does anyone know where things got held up?
  - kelnos 3y ago

dredmorbius 3y ago

The USPS states that any mail may be refused. Note that it only lists some but not all available methods: <https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remove-name-from-mailing-lists https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remo...> From the old Junkbusters site, there is a Form 1500 which can be filed against any sender: <https://web.archive.org/web/19970713104642/http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/self.html#prohibit https://web.archive.org/web/19970713104642/http://www.junkbu...> Form 1500, "Application for Listing and/or Prohibitory Order": <https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1500.pdf https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1500.pdf> Though specified as against "sexually-oriented" material, that has been deemed by courts to be at the sole judgement of the mail recipient. You can also directly contact bulk senders through the DMA mail preference service, Valpack, RedPlum, and others. See one listing of these here: <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-stop-junk-mail_n_5b27beb7e4b056b2263c5b54 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-stop-junk-mail_n_5b27b...> The Form 1500 is the take-off-and-nuke-it-from-orbit option, however.

dimal 3y ago
The question I have is, why does the USPS provide a discount for bulk mail at all? Sending bulk mail is less than half the price if a regular letter. It’s basically a subsidized door-to-door garbage delivery. My recycling bin is right next to my mailbox, and my daily routine is removing the garbage from my mailbox and putting it in the bin. Such a ridiculous waste. And it’s my responsibility to opt out of this nonsense? Make it more expensive to send and maybe that will reduce the crap being sent.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > why does the USPS provide a discount for bulk mail at all? Because as a condition of the discount, it is presorted by ZIP code, eliminating a significant part of the labor cost of processing it.
  - cma 3y ago
    But why not heavily tax it?

emodendroket 3y ago

Somehow I find junk mail a lot less bothersome to sort through.

bogidon 3y ago

Chiming in with something I've posted in the past that I've found reduced about 80% of this spam mail and only takes 10 minutes to set up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31070730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31070730