I would imagine that if 50 people got the same junk mail flyer they have a system that only scans the flyer once as there would be no need to have a scan of the specific piece of junk you received. Otherwise yes it seems weirdly cheap.
After clicking through a lot of FAQ entries, I found this under "I'm moving": "If you are moving within Austin, TX, we'd love to keep you as a customer." So, I guess they're just in Austin. It took a lot of work to figure that out, though. :/
Millions of people allow Google to read their email because that's the free option. Also because Google doesn't straight up tell you humans are hand sorting it. A human at Google can probably read my email as easily as some one can open my mailbox in meatspace, but both are assumed to be exceptions.
Edit to add: also Google does not ask for a key to my house.
Obligatory snark: That intro video had a serious case of vocal fry.
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.
Any reason your snark has to be obligatory? Especially since it's about a pedantic issue with the video about the service rather than the service itself?
The thing is, you've actually got something interesting to say -- we should certainly consider the privacy implications, and whether this could change limits on government intrusion into your correspondence -- but you buried the lead and presented it in a negative way for no clear reason other than you were feeling like being snarky toward someone's hard work.
I did time at a startup for journalists so this is burned in my skull.
Lede is journalism jargon, and "burying the lede" is a phrase borrowed from journalism.
> Journalistic ledes emphasize grabbing the attention of the reader. In journalism, the failure to mention the most important, interesting or attention-grabbing elements of a story in the first paragraph is sometimes called "burying the lede".
Conversely, you restate the typical inability to look beyond a minor layer of snark for the benefit of not even getting to the interesting points.
And yes, I've been there myself multiple times. What I'm trying to say is - both things really aren't so relevant that we should obsess about them. They're there, we cannot help ourselves, let's get on with things.
This is probably one of the sites that you really need to read the terms of service https://www.outboxmail.com/terms to figure out what you are getting yourself into.
"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."
It's not that different from a service I used to use a loooong time ago, called Paytrust (which got bought by Intuit). I changed all my billing addresses to an address they gave me. (Actually I think Paytrust might have updated the billing address on my behalf for most of the accounts.) Everything they received, they scanned in. The benefit was that they also marked it down with who the bill was from, how much it was, etc. then you could pay them all with just a few clicks. Also, they would do the same thing which was talk to the billers and convert it to an electronic system so that they didn't need to handle paper bills. You could also look at the scanned image of the document if you wanted to, and you could also order a CD at the end of the year with all your documents as well.
So this sounds like Paytrust minus the bill-paying, but with a stronger emphasis on getting rid of and letting you easily view all your mail. (Edit after looking at their site some more: They also will send you the original item if you want it... something that doesn't really apply as much to bills. Although Paytrust did sometimes forward things to me, like a new membership card or something.)
I remember paytrust, I used them for a while (US expat in France at the time). Apparently they still exist and do the same thing I used them for back then.
At the time it was IIRC, $15/mo. Now it's like $10. Personally, I feel outbox's $5 is a sweet spot - it's well south of $100/yr, and is about what I pay for locally filtered bottled water per month.
Also changing the mailing address has significant impacts for things like proving residence (for schools, etc), so that is a pain that Outbox users might avoid.
I still use it (was originally called paymybills.com) before the Paytrust/Intuit absorption. It's a great service, and well worth the fee of $11/month.
Honestly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more a modern mobile/tablet version of Paytrust come around.
working on one now. http://cloudbill.com - would love you to sign up for the beta and would love to chat in the meantime if you have feedback for what you'd like to see :)
Happy to help, have used Paytrust for something like ~7 years can share plenty of positives & opportunities for improvement. Just signed-up @ your landing page, marty@ feel free to contact.
The killer app would be to combine mail from snail mail & email into a single product. For the snail mail side, some OCR, recognizing places/dates/etc. (the way gmail does), & attaching images of the snail mail to the thread should satisfy that use case. All that would be needed after that would be a simple label to designate the snail mail. Voila, you can refer to everything as mail.
Off topic, but it turns out that eagles don't actually sound anything like that. A real bald eagle cry is an amusingly unintimidating high pitched chirp[1].
Cannot read the white text on that background without highlighting.
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.
In relevant part: Whoever, without authority, opens, or destroys any mail or package of newspapers not directed to him, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
Good to know. It makes me a little more paranoid that searching for the words 'authority' or 'permission' reveal 0 relevant results, regarding giving them such authority, in their FAQ.
The privacy aspect is a deal-breaker for someone like me, but I think it's worth considering that you could just use this service for a particular subset of all your mail.
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.)
So they apparently have some way of digitizing my junk mail, sending it to the people who sent it to me, and getting them to stop.
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 been using it for several months in SF and it's pretty great. iPhone app and pretty website let me see my mail from anywhere. They pickup my mail Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Coolest thing to me being able to mark magazines or letters as spam and they will send unsubscribe messages for me.
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.
I had this service for about two months and just cancelled it. My reasons were:
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.
I used to work for a company that did a similar thing to outbox, but differently. They took a picture of every piece of mail and then stored everything until customers placed shipping/scanning request via the web.
I was still there when Outbox first launched. It was deduced that Outbox would have it rough due to privacy/security problems. It was for that reason my former employer never launched an auto-scan product to compete.
I used to work at US Global Mail and I did most/all of the R&D/deployment to modernize their service offering. It now includes a picture of the important side/part of every item that arrives, mail/magazines/packages, whatever. Also a weight and pretty accurate dimensions. The tracking number is also recovered from barcodes on the package, if available. Then after every piece is entered into the database it's uniquely barcoded for internal tracking. Nothing is scanned or opened unless customers ask for it. That's for your privacy as well as liability for the business. Most of the customers get a big FedEx envelope or pouch full of still stamped and sealed regular envelopes (that goes a long way towards building trust) on a weekly/biweekly/monthly basis. You can setup automatic shipping or place requests manually depending on your needs. US Global Mail ships all over the place.
Now the less biased part. Primary competitors are:
outboxmail.com
earthclassmail.com
USA2Me.com
myus.com
bongous.com
I'm sure there are others but those are the ones I was aware of when I was still in the industry.
I would say that the primary thing to google if you're looking for that kind of service is "mail forwarding service" as a search for that turns up many of the competitors I listed and more. https://www.google.com/search?q=mail+forwarding+service
The real bummer about mail forwarding is that you need a Form 1583 either signed in front of one of the employees, or witnessed by a notary. It's a real pain but the USPS did it to prevent mail forwarding companies from being unwitting accessories to various kinds of fraud.
That's about all I can think of but feel free to ask more questions. I'm happy to answer.
I've been using EarthClassMail since 2007. Never had any problems, except when they booted the CEO/Founder for a "professional" CEO installed by the board, jacked prices, and didn't grandfather old customers.
But otherwise, had all kinds of sensitive mail flow through there and never had any problems.
I signed up for virtualpostmail.com recently since I was moving abroad.
It is similar to outbox except all of your mail goes directly to their facility. As in, you forward you mail to a new address provided by them.
Then there's scanning/ forwarding (including international) and package consolidation (i.e. you order multiple packages but would like to forward 1 to save money.)
The service has been good so far. it was cheaper than other mail-forwarding services and provided more of the features I was looking for.
Tired of pretentiously named apps. Mailbox, and now Outbox.
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".
You're kidding, right? Aptly-named products that are popular in the everyday vernacular are pretentious?
In this day and age, it's impossible to own the .com for anything but asdjhlsadnklsajkdaskljjkldas.com without paying through the nose for these domains (see Color).
Simply-named descriptive apps are a step in the right direction.
I think Outbox even fails to meet the much lower bar of naming your product something that is minimally searchable. Trying to find technical help for this product through general web search would be a nightmare.
The fact that this startup exists simultaneously excites me and also makes me lament the monumental failure of the postal service in the US.
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!
First, we're not paying tax dollars to support the US Postal Service; the recent USPS budget shortfalls are a congressional fabrication [0]. You're uninformed on this matter.
Second, even if we were paying for the USPS, a legally protected postal system is the price we as a society have chosen to pay to preserve complete freedom of the press and ultimately of speech. Freedom of the press and of speech means much less in a world where privatized means of delivery can refuse to carry unpopular opinions (compare the ToS of various domain registrars with the completely unrestricted content of newsletters mailed via the USPS).
The postal service operates, largely, as a private business which is massively constrained from certain changes due to Congress. For example, they _can't_ shut down many post offices, since Representatives complain when it hits their district. They're trying to remove Saturday delivery too — that's causing major problems.
DESPITE this ridiculousness, they're not utterly hemorrhaging money. They've got an extremely impressive automated system ... and talk about an audacious business model: They'll move your piece of paper acros the country with incredibly reliability for <$0.50! Not to mention packages — their flat rate pricing is brilliant.
I'm generally deeply impressed by the USPS, and I think you should be too.
Clearly they can do some more automation, and maybe that's in the works, but it's very hard to change people's behavior, and big systems move ponderously ... what's easy for a tiny startup is hard for a service which delivers mail to a few hundred million addresses daily.
I think the problem is that we're not paying enough in stamp fees and costs to keep the USPS running. Instead, spammers and mass mailers essentially have bought out your mailbox (you can't turn this spam off).
Regarding taxpayer funding, the USPS is a fully self-funded organization that can be cheap because it happens to have exclusive access to your mailbox. It's only running deficits because GOP congress decided to ask it to pay it's pension plans for workers not even hired yet [1].
You can question why only the USPS can deliver to your mailbox, but your tax dollars are most certainly not funding the USPS.
The US post office is amazing. They can deliver a letter cross country, door-to-door, for 46 cents! In my experience, USPS and Gmail's spam filter lose important mail at similar rates, < 1%. This is based on how frequently my credit card bills are lost.
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.
> 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.
Well, wait until you have a power bill, water bill, gas bill, garbage bill, phone bill, cable bill, mortgage, credit card bills, car note, doctor's bills, lab results, dentist's bills, vet bills, student loan bills, newsletters from your kids' schools, bank statements, ...
Some of those need a response, some don't because you've already set up automatic bill payment, some are information you want and can then discard, some are things you need to keep for your records.
Indeed, this is why adding another level of complexity to an already byzantine system is pernicious. Why would I want to exert effort declaring what mail I do and don't want to receive through Outbox, then wait a substantial amount of time to receive the mail that is of value to me? If anything, simply handling my own mail is the most effectual and expedient option. The mail that I want gets retrieved and dealt with by me, and the mail that is irrelevant to me can be thrown away with trivial ease. Why would I subject myself to another level of complexity that entails extra effort on my part, an added delay, and an expenditure?
The service is fixing a non-issue, if not exacerbating a real one.
> Well, wait until you have a power bill, water bill, gas bill, garbage bill, phone bill, cable bill, mortgage, credit card bills, car note, doctor's bills, lab results, dentist's bills, vet bills, student loan bills, newsletters from your kids' schools, bank statements, ...
Where do you live? Here in Vancouver, I get my power bill online as a PDF (pay with online banking), water bill via email as PDF (pay with online banking), phone bill online (auto-charge CC, among other options), internet bill online as PDF (pay online with CC), credit card bills online (pay with online banking), bank statements online as PDF... and I'm not usually prone to thinking of British Columbia as a digital vanguard.
It's intolerably slow, underfunded, and generally ineffective. There are days durring which we receive no mail, or receive it at 9:00 PM. It will take four days to send a piece of mail across town. The actual post offices are woefully understaffed and appallingly slow. In general, the system is fundamentally flawed and, from what I've read, totally inferior to the rest of the western world.
No. Both the College Board and ACT profit substantially by selling information about prospective students to schools. However, I'm of the belief that most schools send rather indiscriminately, as I've gotten mail from schools that are in many cases totally incommensurate with my scores and inappropriate given my personal data.
It takes me only ~30 seconds per day to filter mail manually & toss 90%+ into the recycling. That's not a big problem needing solving.
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?
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.
After looking at their FAQ [1], yes they actually do collect mail. My initial thought was that they way to achieve this at a lower cost would be to redirect all mail direct to this company, who could then receive all customers' mail at one central office/warehouse which would lower staff costs massively.
I don't know if mail redirection is possible or easy to set-up in the US, but it is in the UK - although I just checked prices, and that alone would cost $6.40/month for each customer. [2]
> These people most likely scan mail at their homes using a scanner provided by Outbox.
If their FAQ is truthful, they will bring all mail back with them - as it says you won't get mail delivered unless you specifically request an item. Maybe they have clever machines to speed through the process of opening/scanning/filing? At the very least, this means drivers can just rush round collecting items, and the opening/scanning process can then be streamlined back at HQ.
> My initial thought was that they way to achieve this at a lower cost would be to redirect all mail direct to this company, who could then receive all customers' mail at one central office/warehouse which would lower staff costs massively.
Yes, but Outbox actually prefers you don't forward your mail to them![1]
From their FAQ:
“Why on earth do you come by my house to pickup my mail,” we hear from thousands of people. ”Shouldn’t I just send you my mail?” Great question - and one we get a lot. In fact, we shared your belief for about a year… but after tens of thousands of mailbox runs, we’ve concluded that picking up mail at your house is the only way we can create the elegant user experience we demand.
90 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadThis would only work efficiently if it were part of the USPS.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5821421
So, now, you can ping yourself. Internet complete.
Edit to add: also Google does not ask for a key to my house.
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.
The thing is, you've actually got something interesting to say -- we should certainly consider the privacy implications, and whether this could change limits on government intrusion into your correspondence -- but you buried the lead and presented it in a negative way for no clear reason other than you were feeling like being snarky toward someone's hard work.
More snark: it's "buried the lede".
Lede is journalism jargon, and "burying the lede" is a phrase borrowed from journalism.
> Journalistic ledes emphasize grabbing the attention of the reader. In journalism, the failure to mention the most important, interesting or attention-grabbing elements of a story in the first paragraph is sometimes called "burying the lede".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paragraph
> Bury the lead sort of works, but bury the lede is the conventional spelling of this expression.
http://grammarist.com/usage/lead-lede/
"Lede" makes a distinction between lead (leed) and lead (pb/led).
And yes, I've been there myself multiple times. What I'm trying to say is - both things really aren't so relevant that we should obsess about them. They're there, we cannot help ourselves, let's get on with things.
Hell that's the sales pitch: give us your keys so we can steal your mail.
Like I get the idea and it's solid, but christ that's a level of trust I don't have.
Also snark: It's called creaky voice, "vocal fry" is what people call it when they want to wring their hands about kids-these-days
Well maybe I do. ;-)
"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."
So this sounds like Paytrust minus the bill-paying, but with a stronger emphasis on getting rid of and letting you easily view all your mail. (Edit after looking at their site some more: They also will send you the original item if you want it... something that doesn't really apply as much to bills. Although Paytrust did sometimes forward things to me, like a new membership card or something.)
At the time it was IIRC, $15/mo. Now it's like $10. Personally, I feel outbox's $5 is a sweet spot - it's well south of $100/yr, and is about what I pay for locally filtered bottled water per month.
Also changing the mailing address has significant impacts for things like proving residence (for schools, etc), so that is a pain that Outbox users might avoid.
Honestly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more a modern mobile/tablet version of Paytrust come around.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlq2kcYQcLc
Then what the hell is making that amazing and awe-inspiring American sound?
That about sums it up.
Thanks, Outbox.
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.
No, its only illegal to do so without authority [1].
[1] 18 USC § 1703: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1703
In relevant part: Whoever, without authority, opens, or destroys any mail or package of newspapers not directed to him, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
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.)
"Create an account and send us a picture of your mailbox key (if you have one) so we can make a secure copy."
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 been using it for a few months now with good results.
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.
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.
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
I was still there when Outbox first launched. It was deduced that Outbox would have it rough due to privacy/security problems. It was for that reason my former employer never launched an auto-scan product to compete.
It looks like a smart move, even today.
I used to work at US Global Mail and I did most/all of the R&D/deployment to modernize their service offering. It now includes a picture of the important side/part of every item that arrives, mail/magazines/packages, whatever. Also a weight and pretty accurate dimensions. The tracking number is also recovered from barcodes on the package, if available. Then after every piece is entered into the database it's uniquely barcoded for internal tracking. Nothing is scanned or opened unless customers ask for it. That's for your privacy as well as liability for the business. Most of the customers get a big FedEx envelope or pouch full of still stamped and sealed regular envelopes (that goes a long way towards building trust) on a weekly/biweekly/monthly basis. You can setup automatic shipping or place requests manually depending on your needs. US Global Mail ships all over the place.
Now the less biased part. Primary competitors are: outboxmail.com earthclassmail.com USA2Me.com myus.com bongous.com
I'm sure there are others but those are the ones I was aware of when I was still in the industry.
I would say that the primary thing to google if you're looking for that kind of service is "mail forwarding service" as a search for that turns up many of the competitors I listed and more. https://www.google.com/search?q=mail+forwarding+service
The real bummer about mail forwarding is that you need a Form 1583 either signed in front of one of the employees, or witnessed by a notary. It's a real pain but the USPS did it to prevent mail forwarding companies from being unwitting accessories to various kinds of fraud.
That's about all I can think of but feel free to ask more questions. I'm happy to answer.
(https://www.outboxmail.com/learn/privacy)
Totally makes sense!
Although SHA-512 != encryption, so... I'm lost again.
Does anyone have experience with Earth Class Mail or similar services?
I tried PayTrust but it's been nothing but problems for me.
But otherwise, had all kinds of sensitive mail flow through there and never had any problems.
It is similar to outbox except all of your mail goes directly to their facility. As in, you forward you mail to a new address provided by them.
Then there's scanning/ forwarding (including international) and package consolidation (i.e. you order multiple packages but would like to forward 1 to save money.)
The service has been good so far. it was cheaper than other mail-forwarding services and provided more of the features I was looking for.
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".
In this day and age, it's impossible to own the .com for anything but asdjhlsadnklsajkdaskljjkldas.com without paying through the nose for these domains (see Color).
Simply-named descriptive apps are a step in the right direction.
How is Outbox -- which presents a digital version of a snail-mail inbox -- "aptly named"?
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!
Second, even if we were paying for the USPS, a legally protected postal system is the price we as a society have chosen to pay to preserve complete freedom of the press and ultimately of speech. Freedom of the press and of speech means much less in a world where privatized means of delivery can refuse to carry unpopular opinions (compare the ToS of various domain registrars with the completely unrestricted content of newsletters mailed via the USPS).
[0] You can read about this anywhere just by searching "congress usps pension" but http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/the-u-s-pos... is a good start.
DESPITE this ridiculousness, they're not utterly hemorrhaging money. They've got an extremely impressive automated system ... and talk about an audacious business model: They'll move your piece of paper acros the country with incredibly reliability for <$0.50! Not to mention packages — their flat rate pricing is brilliant.
I'm generally deeply impressed by the USPS, and I think you should be too.
Clearly they can do some more automation, and maybe that's in the works, but it's very hard to change people's behavior, and big systems move ponderously ... what's easy for a tiny startup is hard for a service which delivers mail to a few hundred million addresses daily.
So why is that junk mail and unwanted mail is so hard to get rid of? Clearly it seems like something people are willing to pay to opt out of.
Regarding taxpayer funding, the USPS is a fully self-funded organization that can be cheap because it happens to have exclusive access to your mailbox. It's only running deficits because GOP congress decided to ask it to pay it's pension plans for workers not even hired yet [1].
You can question why only the USPS can deliver to your mailbox, but your tax dollars are most certainly not funding the USPS.
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.
Well, wait until you have a power bill, water bill, gas bill, garbage bill, phone bill, cable bill, mortgage, credit card bills, car note, doctor's bills, lab results, dentist's bills, vet bills, student loan bills, newsletters from your kids' schools, bank statements, ...
Some of those need a response, some don't because you've already set up automatic bill payment, some are information you want and can then discard, some are things you need to keep for your records.
The service is fixing a non-issue, if not exacerbating a real one.
Where do you live? Here in Vancouver, I get my power bill online as a PDF (pay with online banking), water bill via email as PDF (pay with online banking), phone bill online (auto-charge CC, among other options), internet bill online as PDF (pay online with CC), credit card bills online (pay with online banking), bank statements online as PDF... and I'm not usually prone to thinking of British Columbia as a digital vanguard.
Elaborate?
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?
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.
I don't know if mail redirection is possible or easy to set-up in the US, but it is in the UK - although I just checked prices, and that alone would cost $6.40/month for each customer. [2]
> These people most likely scan mail at their homes using a scanner provided by Outbox.
If their FAQ is truthful, they will bring all mail back with them - as it says you won't get mail delivered unless you specifically request an item. Maybe they have clever machines to speed through the process of opening/scanning/filing? At the very least, this means drivers can just rush round collecting items, and the opening/scanning process can then be streamlined back at HQ.
[1] http://help.outboxmail.com/customer/portal/articles/984656-h...
[2] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZGsrC9z...
Yes, but Outbox actually prefers you don't forward your mail to them![1]
From their FAQ:
“Why on earth do you come by my house to pickup my mail,” we hear from thousands of people. ”Shouldn’t I just send you my mail?” Great question - and one we get a lot. In fact, we shared your belief for about a year… but after tens of thousands of mailbox runs, we’ve concluded that picking up mail at your house is the only way we can create the elegant user experience we demand.
[1] http://help.outboxmail.com/customer/portal/articles/984656-h...