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Comment by test6554 | Hacker News Reader

I wish I could have 72 hours to review the front of all my snail mail electronically and either select "release to mailbox" or "shred/recycle/delete". After 72 hours it just assumes you want to release it to your mailbox.

Logistically, something like that could save the post office a bunch of money since they don't refund postage just because it was delivered electronically.

Furthermore, people expecting a high-priority package would be more likely to log in and release it to their mailbox more quickly.

Also I wish I could opt to "block sender" for ads and other junk. The post office would still get money/postage, but I would just give the post office advanced consent to shred/recycle all mail from this sender and consider it officially delivered.

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> Also I wish I could opt to "block sender" for ads and other junk. The post office would still get money/postage, but I would just give the post office advanced consent to shred/recycle all mail from this sender and consider it officially delivered.

I don't think you understand how junk mail works -- the mailers have a close business relationship with the USPS, and the fact that you can't 'block' it is a deliberate design pattern. Junk mail is a huge (possibly the major?) revenue stream for the post office. Forcing you to physically handle their advertising message before discarding it is the whole value proposition of this form of advertising; junk mailers aren't gonna keep paying the USPS if the ads are never getting to you.

In many other countries, you can put "No junk mail" or "No bulk mail" on your letterbox.

The US post service, being a service provided by the state, should help to prevent wasting paper and serve the people, not the corporations. In the US, the corporations are not just the primary customers of the USPS, they pretty much own them as far as influence goes.

That is true of far more things than just mail delivery. Unfortunately regulatory capture is alive and well in Washington.

> I wish I could have 72 hours to review the front of all my snail mail electronically

https://www.google.com/search?q=postal+mail+virtual

> The post office would still get money/postage,

The post office can't take money from a customer and then fail to provide the service because someone else told them to. That would be fraid.

> Logistically, something like that could save the post office a bunch of money

Debatable for lack of data. Remember, the post office doesn't do special delivery runs just for you, rather to make deliveries to everyone on a route. If your neighbors are still asking for their mail, then the post office still has to pay for labor + gas + vehicle maintenance to make the deliveries, they just skip your house.

What you'd actually have to do is JIT dynamically figure out the daily delivery route, and see if doing so would allow the post office to employ fewer delivery people to cover a smaller number of overall daily deliveries. Of course, theoretically speaking that's relatively simple - but in the real world, different localities will derive different levels of benefit (including possibly zero) and it's a very expensive system to build to find out how much benefit would be derived.

I've nearly eliminated the amount of junk mail I get with https://www.paperkarma.com/ ... down to maybe one or two a week instead of multiple per day

If you're in Canada you can follow the instructions here for CanadaPost, https://www.canadapost.ca/web/en/kb/details.page?article=how...

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