Earth Class Mail is a Seattle company that is trying to change the landscape. And it could mean a change for us in the future.
For $11.95, the company will assign an internal box number where a customer can have all the mail sent to the company's address. Earth Class opens the mail – letters, bills, catalogs and all – then scans and uploads it to the Web so all the correspondence can be read online.
The company then shreds, recycles or forwards the mail to the customer. Packages are sent directly to the customer's home or to one of 23 U.S. Earth Class Mail Centers.
The convenience has a cost: The $11.95 fee includes 50 pages scanned a month and unlimited recycling and shredding. Each extra page scanned costs 25 cents.
Read the Forbes article here.
What do you think about this? Comment here.
9 comments:
I cant imagine how this company will make profits. They are bound to out of business and with customer mail tied up. Sounds like a great GREEN idea but I say customer beware.
You know what I have been saying for a long time now is; I think we as the postal service should charge like 10 dollars for an hours delivery anywhere in the USA. Almost everyone of our post offices have a fax and or scanner with email. We could actually have customers come to the window that need something there NOW or YESTERDAY we have all heard that. And we could take that document and scan it or fax it to the post office and have the PM or Clerk or Carrier take it to where it needs to be in an hour or less. This is a great way to make some extra money and we could probably charge more than that. And it really wouldnt be that much of a hassle and there wouldnt be that much cost involved.
This is great for Postal Service. We should have this feature built in for all mailboxes in the cost and have different features inlcuding unlimited scanning feature and SLA built on it. We can colloborate with Earth Class or similar firms to divert the revenue lost through digital by these alternative sources of revenue.
Why have a midlle man to your financial information. ID Theft is already a huge problem-This is dependent upon the internet being safe-and very honest employees-Wouldn't touch this one at all.
All it would take is one dishonest worker to have your personal information everywhere. I don't want anyone else to know how much my bills are each month.
Personally, I don't get it. Why pay a company to open and scan (?)my mail when I can go through it myself for free?? And then there's the security issue...I see a real potential for identity theft.
The article states that this company has yet to make a profit. They are already trying to sell off this service and are looking to other avenues in order to be profitable. Sorry, but if the innovators are abandoning the service, what would make me think it's a good idea? It may work better for an established Postal Service as another service that we can provide, but not as a business in itself. The public is still too leery of trusting the internet with its private information, I think.
I think if USPS offered something like this it might be better accepted due to our reputation and the Postal Inspection Service. Apparently European countries are adding this to their postal services. The US has at least one other company offering electronic mailboxes, too. As far as myself, I don't want anyone else opening my mail, especially not sensitive information. Plus something mailed locally or regionally that I get in one or 2 days would take at least 3days before Earth Class would have it available for me to view. And if I chose to have it sent to me, another 3 days. I can see that this would be convenient when you're on an extended vacation. And as younger, techie-raised generations start using mail more they'll jump right on this. There are still a lot of issues to work out before it's perfected, but as it appears to be something that's going to become viable, USPS needs to be the company that operates the system. We have the infrastructure in our post offices throughout the country and we could capture this revenue stream rather than losing to someone else.
As I recall the Postal Service did scan/fax back in the early 1980's. I heard a story that we were forced out of the field by private industry not wanting the competition. But our Postal R&D folks were thinking ahead back then. Maybe now is the time to pursue this again!
Post a Comment