Comment by ryanelkins | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryanelkins | Hacker News Reader

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Here is what I hate about the USPS and spam. I opened a PO Box to receive rental payments on some properties I owned. The only people who got this address were tenants. It wasn't used for anything else. I'd check it once a month and it would be crammed full of ads. By crammed I mean seriously tightly wedged full of junk. I'd have to pick through it all to try and find my rent checks and not throw them out with the ads.

That was a pain but here's the question: How did they (advertisers) know this box was open and active? If mail was going to it before I opened it, what did they do with it? I tried complaining but got the "we have to deliver every piece of mail regardless of the originator". My best guess is mail was being sent there from a previous user and while it was vacated they just threw it away or something. Once the new user (me) opened it back up I just started getting it all.

At one point I just let the junk accumulate to see what would happen. I'd get the "real" mail but the junk (which could no longer really fit) stopped showing up. Then I got a note that I need to clear it out more often or they would close it though :(

I'm pretty sure they just pay the Post Office to put ads in every PO Box there.

Would there not have been an address on the mail?

I assume there's a list of valid PO boxes provided, much the way addresses are taken off of a list somewhere, addressed to "Current Resident", and delivered that way though the mail was not only obviously mass spam but not even addressed specifically to the resident.

US Postal makes money delivering marketing materials from local businesses (supermarkets and the like) to P.O. Boxes. They also offer no way to let you opt out of this.

In Canada this is called Unaddressed Admail, and it allows companies to send flyers to entire neighbourhoods without having to address the mail individually. I'm pretty sure there is a way to opt-out.

> How did they (advertisers) know this box was open and active?

The post office told them -- hey sell their customer list.

:(

This happens to me, too. I am sure I've lost important mail because it got mixed in with the crapmail. (OK, I probably don't get any important mail. But still, it worries me a little.)

I guess this isn't as bad as people that break into my building and shove their ads under my door. That really annoys me.

I wonder if we ended the postal monopoly if we would see private carriers compete on quality of service by trying such things as not spamming you.

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