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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Junk mail is wasteful and a PITA but it isn't quite as intrusive as a phone call. You pick up your mail when it's convenient, and it's easy to identify junk mail and discard it without it really interruping your day or having it change its message when it sees you heading for the trash bin.

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It's long since passed the point where the task of sorting through junk mail for the very rare valid item is a tedious and error-prone chore. Again, the real harm is in missing legitimate postal mail.

You can request junk mail, including bulk unaddressed mail be excluded. And reject delivery requiring your carrier to pick it up and dispose of it.

Yep, I just don't check my mail. I get emails for my bills, I don't get checks in the mail or anything, I track deliveries of things I've ordered. Mail is sort of useless nowadays anyway, there's no reason to send me paper when there are a myriad of ways to contact me electronically.

I once decided not to replace a stolen mailbox at my house. I don’t get anything of value anyway.

My carrier just started leaving it on the ground in front of my door. Including all that spam addressed to nobody. Even though I repeatedly opted out of that stuff.

At least where I live, the post office primarily serves as a spam distribution agency, and they take that mission very seriously.

I've missed several jury duty summons with this same strategy.

I take the trouble to respond to those, but some people say they don't respond to anything they didn't have to sign for.

>You can request junk mail, including bulk unaddressed mail be excluded. And reject delivery requiring your carrier to pick it up and dispose of it.

How? Last I checked Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) cannot be opted out of.

The USPS states that any mail may be refused, though lists only a few specific advance refusals of mail here:

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Refuse-unwanted-mail-and-remo...

I'm pretty sure that both EDDM and specific bulk mail senders can be blocked.

There was a long-standing rejection applied to pornographic materials, based on the recipients own assessment based on "I know it when I see it", though that loophole may have been closed.

From the old Junkbusters site, there are a Form 2150 and 1500 which can be filed against any sender.

https://web.archive.org/web/19970713104642/http://www.junkbu...

I'm only finding the form 1500, here:

https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1500.pdf

You can also directly contact bulk senders through the DMA mail preference service, Valpack, RedPlum, and others. See one listing of these here:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-stop-junk-mail_n_5b27b...

The From 1500 is the take-off-and-nuke-it-from-orbit option, however.

No you can’t. There’s a Direct Marketing Association that will let you “opt out”, but it’s purely voluntary and only a minority of junk mail senders are members.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32038862

If you bothered to read the linked USPS page, you’d know that “refusing” mail does not prevent you from receiving it. It just means you can give it back to your mailman. Lower on the page it discusses what I mentioned, that there’s voluntary opt-outs that some companies will abide by.

There is no way to tell USPS to not deliver junk mail to you.

https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1500.pdf

That’s for porn. Nothing else. Again with the not reading huh?

As determined and assessed by the recipient.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32038862

> the real harm is in missing legitimate postal mail.

What the post office should enforce is properly labeled envelopes. Watermarks like "response required", "official correspondence", "winning x enclosed", " final notice" should be chargeable/fineable when not legitimate.

Envelopes should never have non-postal information in the first place. Destination, return address and postage should be all that is allowed, anything else gets your mail returned at your cost.

That's an interesting proposal.

I used to pay for a UPS Store USPS box, exactly to enable filtering of junk mail...it was an option for the box. worked fantastically.

> when it's convenient

not in general: my wife is a letter carrier part time for USPS, and the overwhelming 2 problems they face are people never getting around to it being convenient, and Amazon shipping huge packages via USPS.

Regarding convenience, mail gets recalled and addressees have to be seriously inconvenienced to retrieve it. this isn't a punitive thing, but a logistics issue.

Being open 8:30-5:00 means the only people actually able to use the post office are those of us doing shift work.

It's just as wasteful but more normalized

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