Trash, DAMNED trash, and )%^&*#&$@$&*%^$! junkmail

[unixronin]

I have decided that I want junkmail to be a crime.  Conservation violation.  $1 per offense.

Each separate item mailed to each separate address to be considered a separate offense.

...Well, OK, no.  I'm not really serious about making it a crime.  But I DO want junk mail to be tariffed at a surcharged rate, not a discounted rate, and I want the US Post Office to be required to set up a means for any postal recipient to file a preference that says "Do not EVER deliver any mail to this address that is not individually addressed by name to a current resident", and then abide by it.  We just came within one semi-chance comment of losing a $450 unemployment check that got accidentally trashed because it was interleaved with a sheaf of ()%*)(@*&$(*&^()#%*&@%_)*@$^%$!! grocery-store circulars and advertising postcards.

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Comments

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

I have seven years experience coding a bulk-mailing application for a non-profit, and carefully applying the USPS pre-sort rules to minimize mailing costs.

Comparing the _prices_ charged by USPS for bulk mail to the _costs_ for delivering that mail is comparing apples and oranges.

Yes, bulk mail is charged less than first class. However, bulk mail is still charged more than it costs the USPS to process it.

Bulk mail processors do a great deal of the pre-sort for the USPS, to the point that a bulk mailer will provide it in "walk-sort" order - the very order that the carrier walks their route to deliver.

The time spent by the carrier sorting the mail into walk-sort order for their route - several hours at the post office before they even hit the street - is a major labor cost for the USPS. Having a bundle of pre-sorted bulk mail that alreadt exists in the order needed for delivery is a significant savings for them.

Hence, bulk mail subsidizes first class mail.

Bulk mailers do not want to send you stuff that just gets thrown in the trash. It's a waste of their money. They have an incentive to purge names from their lists and keep them clean.

You can contact the Direct Mail Association to have your name/address list put on a "do not send" list. A lot of bulk mailers use that list to purge their databases. You'll still get the pizza circulars and store ads, because those go to a "every household" density and it's not cost-effective to selectively purge addresses. You won't get the credit-card, insurance, and cruise-ship offers though.

If you think about it, bulk mail and spam are opposites. The costs of bulk mail are borne by the sender, so they have an incentive to prune the lists as tightly as possible to make their advertising dollar stretch.

Spam, on the other hand, puts the cost burden on the recipient, so there is actually a disincentive to prune address lists, and an incentive to make them as massive as possible, in the offhand chance that one of the scattershot amils will result in a hit.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Your points are taken.

I still wish there was something I could file at the post office, though, or a decal I could put on my mailbox as is possible in Finland, to say "Do not deliver any unaddressed bulk mail to this address."