Next, Recycle Direct™. Select the mail you want delivered, and the USPS sends everything else directly to the recycling center.
- It's slightly depressing to come home to no new mail (I know, that's just a weird mental thing for me).
- More importantly, it helps keep the postal service afloat, something that I think is an important service.
-- It keeps a sizable chunk of U.S. government workers employed. Employed is good.
-- It acts as a proxy wellness check for elderly and rural citizens.
-- It lets Grandma cheaply send me a card and $20 for my birthday. Email and Venmo just doesn't cut it.
100% agree. I still enjoy getting the mail every day after I get home from work. I even find the junk mail interesting, in a "Why in the world did they send this to me?" type of way.
In the grand scheme of annoyances that include telemarketers, throwing out some mail every day is pretty minor.
It does clog up my mailbox but since I swapped out for an extra-giant one that isn't really a problem any longer.
The bundle of grocery store ads that comes every Tuesday, I could do without. I don't shop at any of the included stores, but the bundle has such a mish-mash of odd sized circulars that I have to go through it since important mail gets mixed in frequently.
Couldn't that material be better put to use elsewhere?
You send me spam, which goes directly in the recycle bin, a service that I pay for from my wallet - you need to pay up for the privilege.
If a piece of junk mail has a postage-paid return envelope included, take everything else, stuff it in there, and mail the whole thing back.
Doesn't pay your utility bill, but feels oh so righteous :)
1. give you a mailbox
2. scan outside of all incoming mail
3. allow you to select which ones to open
4. scan the contents
5. optionally forward items you need physical
6. dispose of everything else
My apartment, on a weekly basis, gets mail to roughly 3-5 previous inhabitants. As in, exact same address, etc.
Sometimes even bills from insurance companies or other important mail.
I think when you move you're supposed to notify USPS to forward mail to your new address (probably also inform important mailers of the move as well) but from what I've seen they don't propagate the address changes very well.
I mean, sure, those previous inhabitants may not have notified USPS at all, but I find that hard to believe.
> sure, those previous inhabitants may not have notified USPS at all, but I find that hard to believe
I certainly wouldn't. Why would I notify the USPS that I moved? I would notify my contacts (or much more likely, they'd ask me for my address in the event they wanted to send me something). A delivery service is for delivering things to addresses, not to people.
A delivery service is for delivering things to people; addresses are just a tool for locating the perosn you are trying to get the thing delivered to.
If I have something mailed to me at my office, are you claiming the post office hasn't made a mistake when they deliver it to my home?
So, like, General Delivery?
> If I have something mailed to me at my office, are you claiming the post office hasn't made a mistake when they deliver it to my home?
There's a question of principal/agent there, so maybe, maybe not.
OTOH, I'll maintain that the post office is not making a mistake when it keeps delivering my mail from my employer to me at my actual address, even though they keep sending it to an address which resembles mine only in that the street name and zip code are the same, and two of the four numbers in the street address they use also appear (in different positions) in my actual address.
Which I suppose I should go talk to HR about again.
There is value in updating your address. Ideally, you won't need a year to get things sorted, but a couple of months is certainly valuable.
You're trying to invoke the fear that the only method of contacting your friend is to write to the last address you knew for them. That was true once; it has no particular relationship to the modern day.
Even when it was true, though, postal services were a system for delivering mail to places, not to people. If your friend moved and you didn't know that, it was difficult to contact them.
Also a lot of junk mail will be addressed to the name "or current resident"
The company has gone through a lot of changes since then, for the better.
We'll have some exciting announcements in the coming months as well.