
Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email. - mattverick
http://www.post.ch/en/post-swisspostbox
======
sivers
For what it's worth, for anyone interested, I used this service for years, and
they're great.

Really nice if you're nomadic and want to have a steady mailing address.

In the U.S.,
[https://www.earthclassmail.com/](https://www.earthclassmail.com/) provides
the same service. I think it is (or was) Earth Class Mail's backend software
that is/was powering Swiss Post Box, when I was using it.

Also great for having a U.S. mailing address for your business, if needed.

You can use either of these as the billing address for all your credit cards,
bank statements, tax returns, etc.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Any problems with earthclassmail? I've heard from people who love them and
people who have had problems with them.

~~~
hannibalhorn
I used them for 2-3 years, and wouldn't say I ever had any problems, but left
after they upped prices with little advance notice. Especially when you're
only stateside once a year or so, it becomes tricky to change providers. There
are several similar services these days and some of the smaller players can be
a better fit, depending on your mail volume and exact needs as far as scanning
and forward shipping. I've been pretty happy with virtualpostmail the past few
years now.

~~~
rb2k_
Are there any that are more targeted towards low volume "regular" consumers?
(aka: cheaper)

~~~
Anderkent
@martianpenguin, your comments are dead. Only a small subset of users can see
them.

You can reach out to pg@ to request an unban
([http://www.andrewkkirk.com/2012/12/how-unbanned-from-
hacker-...](http://www.andrewkkirk.com/2012/12/how-unbanned-from-hacker-
news/)). Hopefully enough traffic will make hn reconsider this policy.

------
sparkman55
I wonder if the NSA might start promoting this technology to close the 'snail
mail loophole' that Jimmy Carter uses? [1]

[1] [http://news.yahoo.com/former-us-president-carter-uses-
snail-...](http://news.yahoo.com/former-us-president-carter-uses-snail-mail-
evade-191220813.html)

~~~
ancarda
Is there any reason the NSA can't open snail mail?

~~~
slowmotiony
They can, but the recipent will see that the package has been opened? It's
pretty obvious.

~~~
hnal943
Depends on how badly they want to conceal the information. There's a whole
discipline around opening documents covertly (flaps and seals).

------
lifeisstillgood
That is where all this talk about "what will the Post Office do in the age of
..." goes - they will help me manage all this stuff and rubbish. I will trust
the post office to open and scan my mail, far more than I will JRandomStartup.

And then they can handle a one stop bill payment service for me, and as I
trust them, they can generate a CA and I will put it in my phone and suddenly
they own the customer experience for _everyone_.

~~~
anu_gupta
> I will trust the post office to open and scan my mail, far more than I will
> JRandomStartup

Interesting, my feeling is the opposite - I've lost count of the number of
envelopes I've received that have been partially opened up to check if there
are credit cards etc inside. I seem to remember seeing that one postal worker
a day is caught stealing mail in the UK.

I would absolutely not trust the UK Post Office to open my mail.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Are there international stats? There aren't very many mail services I would
trust, but I would trust the swiss one. Just a gut feeling, though.

------
psuter
Indirectly related, but can anyone recommend a service to do OCR+tagging of
documents? I frequently run into situations where I know I have that important
letter somewhere, but just cannot put my finger on it, then start daydreaming
about grep'ing for it in ~/snailmail.db. A possibly good way to package this
would be a smartphone app where I can scan my letters with the camera, and
have them OCR'ed, tagged, and uploaded to, e.g. DropBox.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I pay $45/year for Evernote; they OCR everything I put into them, and I put
all of my paper mail into it. Also, I configured a fax number from Phaxio,
which pushes the PDF right into Evernote (for those who won't email me
something).

It doesn't have automatic tagging, but the OCR is very good.

~~~
sliverstorm
I was using Evernote, but then I saw how much the upgrade is (and it is a
subscription too). Is it worth it over the totally free OneNote?

I do see that OneNote mobile doesn't have OCR, but I wonder if you could rely
on your desktop to perform OCR for you, and then the phone could search the
results?

~~~
toomuchtodo
For $50/year, I get Evernote on my Nexus 5, my Macbook Air, my iMac at home,
web browser, and my most favorite component, the Evernote Chrome Web Clipper.

I pay more for Netflix, and I get so much more out of Evernote. I'd prepay for
life if I could.

So, to answer your questions:

> Is it worth it over the totally free OneNote?

For me, most definitely. I've built it into my workflow. For you, that depends
on value.

> but I wonder if you could rely on your desktop to perform OCR for you, and
> then the phone could search the results?

As I mentioned, for $50/year (which I make in less than half an hour), it
_just works_.

------
peterkelly
I read the first half of that title and though "oh god, here we go again".
Then I realised (1) it's Switzerland, not the US/NSA, and (2) it's actually a
useful service.

Go Switzerland!

Extra paragraph to compensate for the HN comment truncation bug.

------
phlo
Interestingly, they are also attacking the "problem" of snail mail from
another angle:

ePostOffice [1] is an online control panel and inbox, allowing recipients to
select how they'd like to receive communications [from participating senders].
It's in a limited pilot phase right now, but seems promising.

A final interesting tidbit: Swiss Post has a financial subsidiary called
PostFinance which handles most of Switzerland's wire transfers. Most invoices
include a (machine-readable) payment slip. OCRing that payment slip and
importing it into PostFinance's e-banking platform seems like an interesting
idea. The different divisions have begun to more closely integrate their
services, and recently launched a large campaign promoting the variety of
Swiss Post's offerings. We'll see how it goes.

[1] [http://www.post.ch/en/post-startseite/post-
privatkunden/post...](http://www.post.ch/en/post-startseite/post-
privatkunden/post-empfangen/post-empfangen-empfangsvarianten/post-
epostoffice.htm)

------
ameister14
Didn't Outbox try this and shut down a couple of months ago?

~~~
jagath
Yes. According to the Outbox blog "senior leadership of USPS made it clear
that they would never participate in any project that would limit junk mail
and that they were immediately shutting down our partnership"
[http://blog.outboxmail.com/post/74086768959/outbox-is-
shutti...](http://blog.outboxmail.com/post/74086768959/outbox-is-shutting-
down-a-note-of-gratitude)

------
preek
Being self employed and living a very nomadic life (1.5 years with all my
belongings in a 70l backpack), this service has been incredibly useful for me
since there are a lot of services requiring me to have a snail mail address.
If you are a Swiss citizen, I can only recommend getting an account.

NB: I have been in the same bureau as the original project lead and consulted
in several aspects of the project.

Therefore I have been a customer for the last 4 years, with three years not
being associated with the Swiss Post as employee anymore. I couldn't be
happier with the service as it provides me with snail mail addresses in four
countries whilst I only did a single payment for those - now I only pay by
mail volume.

------
rahulcap
As a former user and fan of Outbox, it makes me both happy and jealous to see
the Swiss post take this on. It makes so much sense. Too bad the USPS is so
dependent on junk mail to ever try this. Or..if they did they would mess it up
by blasting your "e-post-box" with e-junk-mail.

~~~
pellpaul
Hey I can understand one would like that service, but the price at which they
are providing it is really high! As a swiss citizen, I'd never subscribe :s

~~~
smoe
I wouldn't subscribe whilst in Switzerland either, but I'am considering using
their service while traveling. Since I only have to actually open about 2-3
Mails per month, I think the price is ok. At least a don't know anybody who
would (and I trust to) handle my mails for ~36 CHF per month except my
parents. But I feel kind of bad using them as my "secretaries".

------
eddywebs
Wondering how the privacy is taken into equation while scans are done of the
mail.

~~~
syjer
It's answered in the FAQ: [http://www.post.ch/en/post-startseite/post-
privatkunden/post...](http://www.post.ch/en/post-startseite/post-
privatkunden/post-empfangen/post-empfangen-empfangsvarianten/post-
swisspostbox/post-swisspost-box-faq.htm#txt128872) .

Postal secrecy is taken seriously in switzerland.

~~~
Argorak
It doesn't cover that this potentially breaks the Secrecy of Correspondence,
which is a fundamental law in some countries, including Switzerland. IANAL,
and certainly not a Swiss one, but in Germany, there is a similar project
(EPostBrief), which suffers from that problem: once the letter is unwrapped,
the law doesn't bite anymore, as it doesn't apply to digital transmissions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence)

It doesn't matter how much your provider insists that they keep things secure.

------
kalleboo
I used to have a service in Sweden that did this (Abuni) but they failed to
get acquired and shut down. As someone who travels a lot, it was a godsend,
and I don't know what I'm going to do to replace it.

------
patatino
In the english version the "Number of letters monthly (incl. envelope scan)"
is missing:

Single Easy: 0 Liberty Plus: 100 Professional: 400

Would love to use it, but a little bit too expensive.

------
noinsight
The Finnish postal service is at least testing this as well. I don't know
about the current status of that effort however.

------
drcoopster
I use virtualpostmail.com for the same purpose; it's a bit easier if you're
US-based.

~~~
joshuaheard
I have been using this service for years. I started using when I lived
overseas, but now I will never quit. With my bank bill pay, I am pretty much
paperless.

------
walshemj
X.400 called from the 80's and said "what took you so long :-)"

------
vegustui
NSA's wet dream.

