Seeking Revenue, Postal Service Plans to Deliver More Junk Mail

[alp227]

Source: NYT

Customers might complain about the flood of unsolicited credit card applications, supermarket fliers and shopping catalogs in their mail, but the Postal Service is hoping to deliver even more.

Faced with multibillion-dollar losses and significant declines in first-class mail, the post office is cutting deals with businesses and direct mail marketers to increase the number of sales pitches they send by standard mail, the official term the agency uses for what is less kindly referred to as junk mail.

“Standard mail is the best way to reach your customer,” said Patrick R. Donahoe, the postmaster general, during a presentation last month on the future of the post office. “You can advertise on Facebook, but I don’t see how you can trace the number of ‘likes’ to return on investment.”

But as the Postal Service embraces direct mail to shore up its faltering bottom line, it faces opposition. Cities struggling to pay recycling and landfill costs to dispose of billions of pieces of unwanted mail are objecting to the expense. Localities estimate that they spend about $1 billion a year to collect and dispose of it.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/business/seeking-revenue-postal-service-plans-to-deliver-more-junk-mail.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[olddad56]

1. I'll just have to move my recycle bin closer to my mailbox.

[CreekDog]

12. Yes, and this is environmentally wasteful

yikes. i still get too much junk mail and i've done just about everything to get it to stop, the idea that i'd get more is astounding and frustrating.

[KegCreekDem]

14. You beat me to it.

My thoughts exactly. I'm going to have to move the big pink recycling bin next to the mailbox. Such a lovely sight.

[YvonneCa]

15. I always thought, since we have a community mailbox where I live...

...that we should have a recycle bin right next to the mailbox. Simplifies things.

It is an exercise in futility, the way it is. Almost all the mail is junk...goes straight into my recyling container at home...and I have to pay a company to haul it away. WHY????

[paulwarnerwarrior]

2. They Aren't Losing Money

The Post Office makes a profit. Their problem is the Republicans passed a bill that makes them overspend billions upon billions every year paying for the retirement of Postal Workers that haven't even been born yet.

http://www.RepublicansAreADisease.com

Republicans Are A Disease. Since the post office has "union" workers, and unions are bad, Republicans have to try to destroy them. Can't have no guvvmint union jobz now kan we?

God I Hate Republicans.

I Really Really Really Reeeeeeely Hate Republicans.

And now they filibustered the bill that will help vets get jobs.

[lexw]

8. I hear ya.

They disgust me. Selfish, callous, heartless. I just can't understand living like that.

[Festivito]

11. Well said. Welcome to DU. Article is just a NYT hit piece against US.

USPS hopes they get more now that the economy rises.
NYT translation: PO seeking revenue.

PO is okay and economy getting better somehow comes across as there are problems and PO is floundering, grasping for straws.

Our media stinks.

[msongs]

3. or it could just jack up the rate for all this unwanted trash nt

[yends21012]

4. So lets start a campaign.

Have people consolidate all junk mail they receive, unopened, and bring it to some large collection centers in the major cities. The collection centers will sort all of the junk mail and send it back to the originators. This would solve localities from having to pay increased landfill or recycling costs, increase the revenue of the USPS, and perhaps overwhelm the originators of junk mail with their own crap. So now how does one go about setting this up and more importantly, get funding to pay for it all?

[GReedDiamond]

5. I am perfectly happy to receive junk snail mail via the USPS...

...if it helps to keep the USPS up and runnin, go ahead, send me more!

I'll use it for something...mash it up into a malleable paper mache mush or whatever.

Fuck the fuckin privatization of the fuckin USPS!!

They do a great job, as far as I'm concerned.

[murray hill farm]

6. I agree!

We can help them even more by sending back any junk mail that sends along a postage paid envelope from banks and credit card companies in attempts to get us to sign up, etc. Just fill the envelopes up with all the junk that they send you and send it back with "no..I am not interested" written on the forms that they send and include a few pieces of other junk mail you got the same day. They will have to pay the postage to USPS for whatever the cost to send it back to them.

[GReedDiamond]

7. And I agree right back atcha! The USA is no longer the USA...

...without the USPS.

The privatization parasites can go fuck themselves sideways.

[Sherman A1]

10. I have to add, that with my recent experiences with UPS

that the USPS looks better and better everyday.

[Sherman A1]

9. Precisely

I have been doing that for years. I figure that the banks and alike can help, it's their patriotic duty in my opinion. I am sure to remove anything with my name on it and shred that portion, but everything else can go back. After all, if they didn't want the things back, why did they send along the PP envelope?

I just want to help them out.

[CreekDog]

13. i'm not perfectly happy to receive junk mail

i understand the USPS's plight, but using energy and resources to give me and my neighbors stuff we don't want is really bad.

[bemildred]

16. The final circling of the drain for a once great institution. nt