

United States Postal Service tries to compete with Google using fear - nate
http://n8.tumblr.com/post/16468921498/united-states-postal-service-tries-to-compete-with

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jdthomas
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?

~~~
ojilles
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
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/>

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hammerdr
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.

~~~
extension
Nearly all my mail ends up at addresses from my past. If it wasn't for
e-bills, I would never receive (my own) bills. And I have received mountains
of mail from countless former tenants at every place I've lived, mail they
will never see. The post doesn't seem very reliable to me.

~~~
beambot
USPS needs to implement a form of indirect addressing. The basic premise:
Assign recipients a unique ID. The physical address is then a single indirect
lookup (ie. from a database, which can be altered by the recipient ad
nauseum).

For obvious reasons, SSN as a unique ID is out. Given the (relative)
portability of phone numbers, these might be a good option. Alternatively,
allowing users to employ their email address as the unique ID would be
awesome! I'd pay an annual fee to USPS if senders could just write my email on
an envelope and it would get to me (bonus points for selective digitization).

I think this is one of the beauties of Google Voice service: It's indirect
addressing for my phone number. If USPS took some initiative, they could
really invigorate their service and bring it into the technical age.

~~~
sp332
_a database, which can be altered by the recipient ad nauseum_

They already have this, of course. You can send USPS a change-of-address form
and they'll send mail addressed to you at your old address to your new
address. [https://moversguide.usps.com/icoa/icoa-main-
flow.do?executio...](https://moversguide.usps.com/icoa/icoa-main-
flow.do?execution=e1s1)

~~~
beambot
I did this just last month. The postal worker informed me that the forwarding
only lasted for a period of one year -- that's not a very good long-term
solution.

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gerggerg
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?

~~~
dwiel
Also, I see way more junk mail in my mail box than I do in my email inbox ...

~~~
beambot
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
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.

------
timjahn
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.

~~~
roc
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.

~~~
patio11
Defenders of the Post Office like to say this, but it is at odds with reality.

The prefunding requirement only requires them to have the NPV value of future
payments for everyone who currently or formerly works for them. This is how
everyone _should_ accumulate pensions: the alternative is an accounting
gimmick in which you promise unsustainable future payments today and then make
yourself scarce (or ask for the taxpayer to clean up your mess) when they come
due tomorrow.

(The minimum requirement for all employers is that they implement pay-as-you-
go, which means that someone's pension should be fully funded at the point
where they start drawing benefits. This means that, if you hypothetically have
100k employees who are 5 years from retirement, you can report a pension fund
with no assets as fully funded today. This gives you five years to look under
the seat cushions for the $25 billion you need to come up with to avoid
insolvency. Congress has decided to not let the Post Office implement pay-as-
you-go because Congress anticipates that the Post Office will, if allowed to
do that, report "The Post Office is profitable on its own revenues and
receives no support from the federal government" reliably every year until
their pension fund implodes with a 13 figure uncovered liability.)

They're separately required to produce accounting projections for the next 75
years, but those don't have a funding mandate attached to them.

[http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/...](http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/CNBC/Sections/News_And_Analysis/_Blogs/NetNet/__DAILY_POSTS/CRSmemo_postal_rhb.pdf)

The part most relevant to the discussion is the paragraphs surrounding: "Under
current law, PAEA (P.L. 109-435) requires USPS to determine the actuarial
present value of future retiree health payments for current or former
employees and to amortize that liability over a 40 year period."

~~~
roc
> _"This is how everyone should accumulate pensions"_

Probably. Yet this is the only group that is required to. And they've been
required to make up the difference under a very short timeframe. Should every
pension fund be given only 10 years to correct the situation?

> _"Congress anticipates that the Post Office will, if allowed to do that,
> report "The Post Office is profitable on its own revenues and receives no
> support from the federal government" reliably every year until their pension
> fund implodes with a 13 figure uncovered liability."_

And why is the Post Office singled out for this concern? Are other government
profit centers treated the same way? Perhaps the Patent Office?

~~~
Goronmon
>And why is the Post Office singled out for this concern? Are other government
profit centers treated the same way? Perhaps the Patent Office?

It probably has to do with the number of employees. IIRC, the Post Office is
one of the largest employers in the country.

------
grecy
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.

~~~
paulhauggis
Playing on your emotions is an important part of marketing. Most successful
marketing campaigns to this to some degree.

------
SpikeX
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.

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sp332
It's a federal offense to steal someone's mail out of their mailbox. No such
protections exist for email.

~~~
patio11
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.)

~~~
sp332
So there are a bunch of employees at my ISP who are fully "authorized" to read
my mail. Also a bunch at the recipient's ISP. And probably some scanners in
various systems in the middle that might surface my email for purposes of
targeted advertising or spam fighting. It's not nearly the same level of
protection.

~~~
randomdata
You are welcome to put your email in an envelope (i.e. encryption). The
technology exists and is proven.

If you send your regular mail without an envelope, there is a good chance many
people will read it along the way too.

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benedictfritz
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.

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

~~~
grhino
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
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
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.

~~~
streptomycin
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-
kill...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/who-killed-the-
postal-service/249508/)

------
thaumaturgy
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
> The knowledge that we take for granted -- .jpg is safe, .vbs is not

Not always: [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/security/bulletin/ms04-02...](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/security/bulletin/ms04-028)

------
mncolinlee
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.

------
tomkarlo
_"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.

------
motoford
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.

------
malandrew
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.

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Karunamon
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.

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

~~~
mseebach
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
No matter how environmental the paper is, sending paper to people who don't
want it is a huge waste of resources.

------
firefoxman1
After being reminded of the "You wouldn't download a car" meme yesterday, I
could completely see this becoming the next one.

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EGreg
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...

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logn
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?

