Outbox – A beautiful inbox for postal mail

1. They weren't picking up my mail or delivering my magazines/packages with the consistency that they promised. This gradually eroded my trust the more times I found evidence of it happening.

2. I don't want to lose access to all my mail if they go under or get hacked. My only way to access it is via their apps and website, which could go away at any moment. To make matters worse, they shred all the physical copies after 30 days.

Those things plus the general lack of trust started making me very, very nervous as time went on.

Edit: more details

2. Scan each page of mail, including envelopes

3. Post scans online

4. Return requested physical mail

5. Charge $4.99 for this service

6. ...

7. Profit?

Looking at their job postings, they have one person per city managing a team of people working probably close to minimum wage going door-to-door. These people most likely scan mail at their homes using a scanner provided by Outbox.

Let's say they pay a City Manager $100,000, or $125,000 after taxes, unemployment insurance, and benefits. An individual can take on 30 customers, is paid above minimum wage (let's say $15 after taxes, etc.), and works 7 hours a day (or 35 hours/week, making them part-time employees). That's roughly $30,000 per worker annually.

At $4.99 per month, none of the economics work. At 30 customers per part-time employee, the break even point is $100 per month per customer. At $4.99 per month each PTE needs to handle around 600 customers each to break even. 100 customers per PTE at $30/month also breaks even. But even 100 per PTE seems unrealistic.

Unless I'm missing something very basic, it just doesn't scale at $4.99 per month. At all. It's not even close.

"If applicable, and unless you direct Outbox otherwise, Outbox may also, now or in the future, direct the third parties who send you mail and/or bills to send certain items of such mail and/or bills electronically to an email address provided to such third parties by Outbox specifically for that purpose and for that purpose only, in which case you authorize Outbox to do so in its sole discretion for as long as your account for the Service remains open."

The first is that the premise is trivial at best and detrimental at worst. Let's evaluate my current mail situation. Considering that I'm a junior in high school, I receive a substantial amount of college-related junk mail (between five and ten pieces per day), in addition to perhaps three other items. I don't understand why it is preferable to sort though my mail digitally. It is already trivial to remove my mail, quickly glance through it, and toss the junk mail into the recycling bin in my foyer. Being able to do this via a web interface means nothing to me, and certainly isn't worth my money. In fact, I would argue that this worsens my mail-reading experience inasmuch as it creates a level of abstraction that increases the time necessary to deliver the mail I do care about, like The New Yorker. Our mail system is already a travesty. I'm certainly not going to do anything to make it even slower.

The second issue, as mentioned before, is trust. I simply don't trust a startup to open my mail.

While looking at all this, I was mostly considering the potential privacy implications. Then again, with the amount of stuff we push online these days, it's seems somewhat comical to even consider it. That alone is weird.

Then I read up on it and realized that secrecy of correspondence isn't really that much of an established principle internationally as I have been accustomed to, living in Germany. (It seems like France even had the death penalty on it for a while.)

Still - Paying a service 5 bucks a month to invade your privacy* just seems a little more real when it is about actual stuff, not just things that are bits and bytes anyways.

*And don't tell me it won't happen. It will always happen. Somebody other than you will have or get access to that data.

Yes, I get it that Apple Computer shortened their name to Apple, and that it's cool to be like Apple. But that isn't OK, and it doesn't make it OK for your startup. It's pillaging of the English language. At least when I say apple, context may help people to recognize when I mean the fruit and when I mean the tech company. With Outbox and Mailbox the context is less likely to provide the needed hint, because the lowercase terms and the uppercase terms in the same domain: email.

Adding to the pretense is the fact that they don't even own "{{product_name}}.com". Instead it's "{{product_name}}mail.com" or "{{product_name}}app.com".

"Create an account and send us a picture of your mailbox key (if you have one) so we can make a secure copy."

1. There's no way I trust this company or its employees to act appropriately with my mail 100% of the time.

2. I'd be afraid of missing something important due to an unknown delay in the scanning process.

3. Their database will get cracked, and customer information leaked, when they get big enough to be a worthwhile target. It's only a matter of time.

And, they don't explain how they "pickup" securely. Do I need to be home? Then you've lost all time savings, as I have to answer the door to do the transaction with you.

If I don't have to be home, then how can you get into my mailbox securely?

That about sums it up.

Thanks, Outbox.

However for a startup to try to replicate the multibillion dollar infrastructure that is already in place there is silly, and the USPS won't do it because of federal laws that would need to change about opening mail.

Of course it would make the NSA happy as well ;)

1. Setup a centralized warehouse, where I can forward my mail to. Just send the mail to y'all instead of you coming to get it at my mailbox. Also, makes it available to a wider customer base. That's just silly easy.

2. Make all of the information in my account downloadable for back-up and privacy control reasons. Makes me, the customer, feel more secure and trusting.

3. Up your monthly to $10 or even $14, $4.99 says you're not serious about sticking around long. Especially when you combine that price with the amount of overhead you have taken on. I'd buy it in a heart beat at $10 with you centralizing your workforce to an inexpensive one-location solution.

This is a great idea, just needs efficiency implemented more.

Edit: Just fixed a couple things.

Some flaws are how they handle anything more complex than just picking up mail addressed to you. Living in a rental apartment, I get plenty of previous residents that they ignore; I love would love to be able to get them to unsubscribe me from all mail that isn't addressed to me. But that gets more complex with my roommate, who doesn't use the service.

Otherwise, for $5/month, I like not having to check my mailbox and I haven't had any issues.

(https://www.outboxmail.com/learn/privacy)

Does anyone have experience with Earth Class Mail or similar services?

I tried PayTrust but it's been nothing but problems for me.

It's easy to find scenarios where privacy is important, but isn't it also possible to find scenarios where it isn't?

Think of it as an alternative to PO boxes. No hassle with anthrax, ricin, and bombs in the mail anymore. (Although they probably won't use this in the ad copy for the service.)

Other thought: while a nice idea, the privacy concerns around other people reading your mail are so great, I'd have a very hard time justifying signing up for this service. Also - it against the law, a federal offense even, to open mail addressed to someone else.

Finally, why isn't their FAQ on "Is my mail secure?" a direct link off of their home page? Perhaps I'm just paranoid.

Is there anyone who offers this service without the need to have someone actually come to my house and pick my mail up for me? I will gladly scan or take a smartphone picture of junk mail.

I've used them years ago, and it worked out pretty well. Only part I didn't like was at the time they only had a very ugly po box address for Boston.

Is anyone else pissed that we're paying tax dollars to support the US Postal Service while we're now slowly having to pay the private sector to deal with the mess that has become our mail?

It seems like such a waste of resources.

EDIT: I stand corrected. The USPS is not funded directly by tax payer dollars. I still lament the fact that either it's underfunded by us, or constrained by laws and can't offer a level of service similar to what Outbox provides!