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Comment by uses | Hacker News Reader

Your first sentence isn't even true and you can go right here and read the table that shows their revenue sources: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2019/1114-... To spoil it for you: in 2019, First-Class Mail and Shipping and Packages made significantly more revenue than Marketing Mail. Yes, USPS needs some new revenue streams. They do provide significant value that others cannot meet, which is daily mail delivery to anywhere in the USA. But yes, they need to find other unique services too.

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You don't need the personal attacks, and in this case, I suspect that you definition of spam is anything marketing, while ny definition is anything that is sent in bulk to large number of people, or is uninteresting to me:

"irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients."

A non-trivial percentage of "first class" mail is actually spam. The difference is in quality of service (delivery times for first class is significantly faster in some circumstances then marketing).

I do agree that that there is value in daily mail delivery, but my point is that the value needs to be enhanced, rather then just continue in what it is today. Cut service where it doesn't make sense (go to every other day), encourage people to use email, which is way less wasteful, and less harmful for the environment, focus on rural routes.

The chart doesn't show the relative volumes of mail. For every priority mail package at $14.95 that same $14.95 buys HUNDREDS of pieces of junk mail.

The terrible thing - you CANNOT opt out of the junk mail, at least in the past (hopefully this has changed).

I have no interest in the USPS as a result. What type of business that is supposed to be providing a service FORCES its future and current customers to kill trees for junk mail that will go into the trash.

If the govt didn't allow for spam filters on email, email would be dying too.

What are you talking about? There is a volume column right in the chart. It shows that for every piece of first class mail there is roughly 1.5 pieces of marketing mail

in the interest of clarity: some marketers also use first class mail so there is some marketing mixed in with the first-class mail numbers.

https://www.mw-direct.com/blog/posts/first-class-mail-vs-sta...

Even marketing mail sent through first class that's presorted will only get you about 30 letters for $15 at $0.46 per letter [0], so still not sure what the original author is talking about regarding 'hundreds'.

[0] https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/Notice123.htm

Fair point - I was responding to the comment that USPS was / wasn't a spam delivery service. The perception is that (even through revenue is relatively low) the USPS does spam.

And with EDDM you cannot get out of this spam blast.

> The chart doesn't show the relative volumes of mail. For every priority mail package at $14.95 that same $14.95 buys HUNDREDS of pieces of junk mail.

Volume has nothing to do with revenue, which is precisely what the original poster pointed to and was being refuted:

> The USPS's primary revenue source is as a Spam delivery service.

Fair point - but the perception is that marketing is a majority of the mail even if it's not a majority of the revenue. And since you can't get out of EDDM mailings you are stuck with these. It wouldn't be that hard to red dot or something your box so the carrier knew you didn't want the junk mail.

You can opt out of junk mail. It is an annoying process that involves finding multiple places to opt out, and takes a few months to take effect because all this shit has a lengthy production pipeline. But it is doable. I get a lot less junk mail than I used to, and if I was willing to put a little more effort in I’d get even less - I had it pretty close to zero in my old place.

This is if you got through the list brokers or other senders. EDDM doesn't allow for any type of block period. That said, it still costs sender money.

But if are in a 50 unit building and you see those big stacks of advertising being plonked into the mailroom, that's what those are.

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