Hey Mr. Earth Class Mail, before you sent me the 1st nasty lawsuit-threatening email, I never mentioned anything negative about your company on my personal blog. You are abusing your so-called “legal right” to take action against me on very “thin” reason – trademark violation.  You know that won’t stand in court, but you still continue to threaten me anyway.

The following day, after receiving your second nasty email, you hired Perkins Coie, a Big Time Law Firm, to write and send me a “formal” letter.  Indeed, you abuse your so-called “legal rights” so much that you even pushed the cease and desist deadline ahead by two days JUST to show me you are in control, and that you have every power to do so.  And you even attacked me on a personal level.

Second of all, you can sue me, but you cannot stop others or me from talking about your “wrongdoings” on blogs, twitter, or any other social media. Do you know how many websites have already published your “wrongdoings” regarding this blog? Are you going to file a lawsuit to every website and every blog out there to shut them down? In your email, you make it very clear that you will take any necessary means to shut me up. How can you stop anyone to freely express their OPINIONS about any company? It seems that for your company, $$ MONEY = How Much Legal Right You Have.

You falsely accuse me, defame me and even bring in the big shot Law Firm to threaten me with legal lawsuit. Why do you continue to waste your investors’ money on this nonsense lawsuit?  Why do you continue to use your legal knowledge to try to manipulate me?  What kind of willful harm and intent are you planning to do to me?

You may not need to answer to me since I am not your boss.  However, I am sure your investors would like to know how you are wasting their investment on this gibberish lawsuit. Continuing to harass and threaten me will force me to fight back.  By then, you can definitely expect a protest and demonstration by me and others in front of your headquarter in Seattle, WA, or the upcoming Angel Capital Expo. Are you going to file a lawsuit for that too?!?!

I’m willing to stop talking about your “wrongdoing” on this blog if I can get a formal apology letter from your CEO Ron Wiener just like the “incident” that happened on TechCrunch.  FYI, Earth Class Mail employees POSED as users and posted FAKE COMMENTS talking up their own services.  Ron Wiener, the CEO of Earth Class Mail, came out and apologized.

I am also demanding that you post the apology letter on your blog to clear up all these false accusations and willful defamation on my CHARACTER and this website.

To all my readers out there

Yes, I am very scared and worried, especially after reading some really scary letters from those who know about Earth Class Mail or used to work there.  But I will not back down!!  And neither will my readers who follow me and care about me doing the right thing.

Season 1 Recap

$21.4M Company Earth Class Mail Threatens Me With Lawsuit. What Have I Done?
Season 1 Finale: Earth Class Mail, I’m Still Standing!
Season 2 Premiere: T.I. feat. Rihanna – Live Your Life (Nevermind what haters say, ignore them ’til they fade away.)

Here is my address for you to send the lawsuit papers:

J. Clayton
PO BOX 24B58
11000 WILSHIRE BLVD.
LOS ANGELES, CA 90024

Days to Season 2 Premiere:  2~3 (waiting for some important emails to arrive)

_________________________________________________________

Anyone who wants to join me in Seattle or Silicon Valley, please email me.  Drive-by support is also welcome and appreciated!

Get updates instantly with Twitter

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Email me all feedback and comments at jclaytonj@live.com

I’m Still Standing by Elton John

Season 1 Recap

$21.4M company Earth Class Mail threatens me with lawsuit, what have I done?

Story Needed

If you are a previous/current employee, associate, colleague, investor, or Earth Class Mail user, I want to hear your story. Please send your experience to me anonymously.

Don’t miss this great opportunity to speak directly to Earth Class Mail. They are a big fan of my blog.

Season 2 Premiere & Highlights

What should the CEO of Earth Class Mail write in his apology letter to me?

Email me If you have any great ideas to help the CEO of Earth Class Mail write this letter.

Season 2 will also broadcast over multiple channels and across the globe.  If you can help me translate this blog into different languages, please contact me.

Days to Cease and Desist: -5
Days to Season Premiere: 3

Email me all feedback and comments at jclaytonj@live.com to spare me from possibly more legal issues.

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TOKIDOKI Friends http://twitter.com/CiaoJ

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

After a long journey, my fight for the “love of earth” resulted in “hatred” from Earth Class Mail Corp.  Today is the day that Earth Class Mail wants me to cease and desist.  But the American people have spoken.  Today is the day that all Americans should cherish.  It is the day we put down our differences and unite as one!

2 Days to Season Finale, Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Email me all feedback and comments at jclaytonj@live.com to spare me from possibly more legal issues.

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http://twitter.com/earthmailfree

TOKIDOKI Friends
http://twitter.com/CiaoJ

44th President Barack Obama’s Victory Speech

Email me all feedback and comments at jclaytonj@live.com to spare me from possibly more legal issues.

Get updates instantly with Twitter

EarthMailFree Update
http://twitter.com/earthmailfree

TOKIDOKI Friends
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Days to Cease and Desist: 0
Days to Season Finale: 2?

Since I do not have enough time to reply to each individual about this possible lawsuit, I have put together some answers to top questions that readers had asked me in their feedback.

1. Is your site sponsored by any company?

   This site has always been non-commercial and free.  There are no Google or sponsored ads.  I also do not endorse any of the services in any way and none of the services I mentioned or reviewed on this personal blog sponsored me.

2. How did it all start?

   When I received my first email (also via certified mail, which I never received) from the General Counsel of Earth Class Mail Corp., their false accusations and absurd demands to have me hand over my domain name at MY cost does indeed sound fishy to me.  However, to avoid possible lawsuit, I retracted the appropriate statements after I received another email  (and later 2 overnight legal letters) from Perkins Coie, a huge international law firm that represents the company.

   After performing a more in-depth research into Earth Class Mail, along with some helpful links from readers, I found more unpleasant information about Earth Class Mail. So I thought to myself, “What did I possibly do to piss off a $21.4M company that seems determined to take me out using any means necessary?“  None of my reviews about them were that negative.  You should see my review on Shoeboxed to see the difference.  Well, some reader suggested that I should be the one to file a legal lawsuit to Earth Class Mail.  Maybe I should take that under advisement.

   Well, here are just a couple shocking posts regarding Earth Class Mail’s business practices:

   $13.3 Million For Startup That Wants To Kill Snail Mail – Read Michael Arrington’s comment after the article.

   I Hate Earth Class Mail – My Review – Evan Fell, a real user of Earth Class Mail services, had the following to say:

   “My official Earth Class Mail Review is 0 out of 5 mail-bags. I hate it. I wish I never signed up. If they were only honest and upfront about how their service operated things might be different. I have called and cancelled my account. If those paychecks don’t show up somewhere they will have a very angry Evan Fell knocking on their front door in Oregon.”

3. What about the trademark infringement issue?

   I will leave the trademark infringement issue to the lawyers without any discussion here. However, in the words of 2600 publisher Emmanuel Goldstein in regards to the landmark case about the domain verizonreallysucks.com:

   “We call on INDIVIDUALS around the world to criticize Verizon on as many domain names as possible and to exercise your rights to free speech.”

   So I, too, call on INDIVIDUALS around the world to criticize Earth Class Mail on as many domain names as possible and to exercise your rights to free speech.  Perhaps I should register the following domain:

   EarthClassMailShouldSpendMoreTimeFixingItsServicesAndLessMoneyOnLawyers.com

4. What does TOKIDOKI Adios has to do with this?

   Nothing. I just love them.

Grand Price Question

Why would Earth Class Mail want to threaten you with legal lawsuit at first place?

Good question.  If you have time, google around, you will find the answer to this question.

Email me all feedback and comments at jclaytonj@live.com to spare me from possibly more legal issues.

Get updates instantly with Twitter

EarthMailFree Update
http://twitter.com/earthmailfree

TOKIDOKI Friends
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Days to Cease and Desist: 3
Days to Season Finale: 5?

- Quote from email received from General Counsel of a $21.4 million company that likes to spend time and money trying to shut me up.

Days to Cease and Desist: 6

Days to Season Finale: 7

As usual, this site continues to remain commercial free since it was used for non-commercial use from the beginning.

jclaytonj (at) live (dot) com
http://twitter.com/earthmailfree

Earth Class Mail / Perkins Coie Legal Letter Page 1 Snippet

Days to Cease and Desist: 6

jclaytonj (at) live (dot) com

And yet, here I am, talking about the continuing progress of my current battle with Earth Class Mail over violating their trademark.  As of now, they have confirmed that this is for real and an email was sent to me from their legal counsel, Perkins Coie, LLP, yesterday afternoon.  Needless to say, I am quite upset by the emails I’ve been getting from Earth Class Mail.  In their last legal mail, they want me to cease and desist the use of this domain name “EARTHMAILFREE.” the “designation EARTHCLASSMAIL.”

Email Reply From Earth Class Mail to My Previous Post

The followup post from Mr. Cameron Powell of Earth Class Mail was received in my email inbox at 11:02am yesterday morning, October 29, 2008.  Herein lies the content of the email (numbers, address info omitted):

_________________________________________________________

Dear jclayton,

I’ve noted your blog posting of today, in which you question the authenticity of my email to you, cast unsupported aspersions on unspecified business practices of our company that you imply are somehow related to our demands regarding our trademark rights, “smell more stinky fish,” and request feedback and legal advice.

I will not offer legal advice, except to say that I must counsel you to locate, expeditiously, a competent specialist in trademark law.

You have said you are, and appear to be, a technically-savvy individual.  You know as well as I do how to determine if an email comes from who it purports to come from.

Your first certified letter is on its way.

And because you have indicated a willingness to tiptoe up to and perhaps over the line of business libel and defamation, you will shortly receive another letter, this time from our outside counsel.  Your deadline for compliance in handing over the infringing domain name will be moved up to Wednesday, November 5.  And the cost-free nature of the settlement terms already proposed will naturally change with any additional time or money we spend on this matter.

Sincerely,

Cameron Powell | General Counsel

_______________________________________________________________________

Legal Email From Perkins Coie, LLP

Later that afternoon, Perkins Coie, their legal representation, sent me the following email at 4:02pm, October 29, 2008.  Original file was in PDF format, now converted into individual images.  Click through to see the enlarged sizes.

Earth Class Mail / Perkins Coie Legal Letter Page 1

Earth Class Mail / Perkins Coie Legal Letter Page 2

My Response To Earth Class Mail

In regards to your request to cease and desist the use of this domain, I will consult an attorney on how best to proceed.

In regards to the second item, as a sign of good faith, I will retract the statements that relates to “fishy business”, even though this is perfectly within my rights to offer and express my opinion.

To the World – Looking for Attorney Reference

I’m just your average Joe with a day job.  Legal jargon is unfortunately not my strong suit.  So this is my shout out to the world to offer some advice on how I should proceed.  I live in Los Angeles, California, so if you happen to be a lawyer specialized in trademark infringment and have taken an interest in representing me in this case, I urge you to contact me privately at jclaytonj (at) live (dot) com.  I will of course look for my own representation at the same time. But whatever I decide to do, everyone on the Internet will be able to see how this progresses and ends.

Meanwhile, just to make sure that my continued posting does not get interrupted, I will be creating additional blogs on WordPress containing full copies of all my posts here, minus any possible “false and defamatory” statements, if any, about Earth Class Mail.

This is not a newspaper.  Neither is this a publication.  This is a pure and simple blog where I can exercise my First Amendment rights to speak my mind.  So I will continue to voice my opinions and write about what I believe is right.

I’ve written a number of reviews about various online web services related to helping people reduce junk mail and save trees.  I get great comments from people running those websites, even from Shoeboxed who offers FREE accounts, and I have never received anything like this until today.  So I was quite dubious about the authenticity of this email.

I did a bit more research on Google and various other sites relating to Earth Class Mail, and I was shocked to discover the posts and comments out there regarding their business practice.  I smell more stinky fish here. Before I actually post my findings, I will wait for a confirmation from them or until I receive the certified mail.

But if this is for real, then I am going to get quite PISSED about this and will fight back using any means necessary.

Anyone can contact me directly at jclaytonj (at) live (dot) com to give me feedback, offer me support, and/or offer legal advice.

UPDATE (10/30/2008): At 11:02am yesterday morning, I received an email stating that this is real.  At 4:06pm yesterday afternoon, I received an email from their law firm, Perkins Coie, LLP, demanding that I “retract and remove these comments from your website immediately” and also cease and desist the use of this domain.  Since they have authenticated this letter, I have retracted the requested statements.  I write more about the new developments in the next post. Read it here ->

_____________________________________________________________________________

By Email and Certified Mail

Re:         Notice of Trademark Infringement

Dear EarthMailFree.com,

Forgive us the impersonal salutation.  As with the website at MyPostalMail.com, we could not find the name of an identifiable person on your website.

As you are aware, Earth Class Mail Corp. uses the term “EARTH CLASS MAIL” (and the domain name earthclassmail.com) in commerce as an identifier of the unique online postal mail service that it invented and has made famous in the relevant marketplaces.

You are employing the term EARTHMAILFREE as a domain name and an organizational designation in discussions of the online postal mail services with which the market overwhelmingly associates Earth Class Mail Corp.  Such use constitutes an infringement of our trademark rights in EARTH CLASS MAIL.  First, the marks themselves are similar.  Your mark shares with EARTH CLASS MAIL two of its three terms, from the most distinctive of all, EARTH, to MAIL.  Your addition of the generic word FREE does little to distinguish the terms and, indeed, is simply likely to be construed as an exhortation for our service to be free (which, coincidentally enough, is the business model of newcomer MyPostalMail.com).  Moreover, some customers and potential customers of our service already call our service “Earth Mail”.  Finally, your use of the term occurs in the context of a website expressly-built for the purpose of opining on the online postal mail service and market created by Earth Class Mail Corp.  The likelihood of confusion as to the source, sponsorship, or endorsement of your site is manifest.  It constitutes trademark infringement and unfair competition under the Lanham Act and state statutes.

Even without a likelihood of confusion, your use of EARTHMAILFREE dilutes the distinctiveness of our trademark, which is famous in the industry it created and among postal operators worldwide, and which is therefore protectable under the anti-dilution statutes of state and federal law.

Finally, to the extent your organization is affiliated with or sponsored by MyPostalMail.com – and we have numerous less-than-obvious grounds for believing it is – these knowing infringements amount to bad faith, and thus warrant not only actual damages but attorneys’ fees.

We have no legally cognizable objection to the content of your blog, except to the extent that it may be a potentially illegal shill for a service competitive with ours.  Should we be obliged to proceed with legal action, discovery would soon enough turn up evidence one way or another.  You are of course on notice not to attempt destruction of any evidence.

We demand that you cease use of the domain name and designation EARTHCLASSMAIL.  Accordingly, if we do not hear from you by Friday, November 7, 2008, that you will cease such use and refrain from using any term confusingly similar to our trademark, and that you will transfer ownership of the domain name to us, at your cost, we will be obliged to review all legal options.  Subject to applicable law, you would of course be free to move your blog content to a new domain name.

We look forward to hearing from you by November 7.

Sincerely,

Cameron Powell

General Counsel

Earth Class Mail Corp.

Cameron@EarthClassMail.com

On a side note, many tech companies are cutting down their workforce and going through some downsizing.  The magical number appears to be 30%.  Techcrunch has an interesting list that tracks the layoffs.  Even eBay is not immune to the current economy.

But not everything is bad news.  During my absence, some cool new developments are progressing on the green side.  So I’d like to cover this in order from oldest to most recent.

Earth Class Mail’s Postal Mail Thru Email

A bit farther back, Earth Class Mail introduced a new feature that allows you to view your images of your postal mail in your email and lets you process it from there.  It’s convenient to see what mail you are receiving before logging on to their website.  I actually find that to be a nifty feature.  As for the mail managing in the email part, I don’t see that as a great thing.  Being a bit techie myself, I know that you can’t actually process your mail inside.  You click on the button and you’ll get taken to their website to manage it.  Hmm… doesn’t that mean the same thing as me going to the website in the first place?  I could be wrong of course.

Shoeboxed’s Business Card Scanning

Shoeboxed announced over the past week that they now offer business card scanning on top of their receipt scanning.  I have to say that this makes their service more complete and better.  Their published screenshots show a nice user interface.

I also noticed that they have finally updated their website to a new layout with consistent pricing.  I  wish that they could have done this in the first place but my first impression is already tainted.  For first-time users who are checking out their service, I believe you will have a better experience.

MyPostalMail’s Virtual Post Solutions

This is perhaps the biggest and most exciting news of all.  Yesterday, MyPostalMail announced Virtual Post Solutions, a set of postal mail, package delivery, fax, and banking package solution they say will give paperless virtual office a whole new meaning.  I’ll just quickly go over some highlights that I think are interesting.

• Sending and Receiving Postal Mail – Aside from receiving mail and viewing them online, they are adding the ability for you to send postal mail, similar to the other similar services that I wrote about earlier.  This is quite interesting because someone actually posted a comment in that other article asking about a service that offers you this exact thing.  So Jerick, this is my reply to your comment.
• Sending and Receiving Faxes – They are also offering you a pay-per-use service to receive and send faxes directly through their system.  There are a myriad web-to-fax solutions out there, so competition will be fierce.  Personally, not so great a feature in my view.
• Depositing Checks - Very very interesting service.  I can already imagine using this mailbox to receive my rebate checks and then have them deposit the checks for me.  I don’t even have to go to the bank since I rarely hit the banks these days as I do most of my banking online.  Saves me another trip.  And the fact that they support 5 US national banks without the need to use any special accounts is great.  This is the first time I’ve heard of anyone offering such a service.
• Forwarding Packages – Send and receive packages through them.  The added feature is that they allow you to split and combine different packages into one. I can imagine some good uses for this, especially for people overseas.
• Eliminating Junk Mail! - They are also doing a junk mail detection feature.  Now, given that this blog is focused on that, I’d love to see how this works… except I have no idea how it works!  The announcement isn’t very descriptive about this, but if this does truly work, it’d give an entirely different meaning to how we manage and eliminate junk mail.

If you are looking for more info, head over to MyPostalMail or their blog to read more about their services.

Back to the Real World

Now that I’m back from vacation, I should have a bit more time to continue writing up more news and reviews.  Nature never rests, and neither should I.

MyPostalMail (MPM) is an online postal mail service, which I wrote a quick summary about in an earlier post.  In their words, MPM allows you to receive postal mail offline and then view and manage it online.  The service is great for checking your postal mail in your PJs.  And in this current gas situation, you save money from driving to the local postal mailbox store to pick up your mail.

I couldn’t help but give their service a try to see what’s new.  Overall, I’m quite pleased with the new functionality.

What’s Good?

I must say that the first impression I have of the demo is the speed that this new application runs.  First, it loads much faster than before.  The second thing I noticed is the new interface.  It seems much simpler and cleaner.  Before, the look and feel seemed a bit bareboned, but his one is much better thought out and complete than the previous one.

Navigating around is also fairly easy and definitely very responsive.  One thing I don’t usually like about Web 2.0 user interface is the occasional heavy use of Javascript/AJAX animations that slows down the user interaction.  MPM has done a good job to keep the interface responsive.

What’s Bad?

Viewing the mail is now separated into three stages – listing the mail, listing the pages in the mail, and then the detailed one-page view.  What I annoying is that there are only two zoom modes when in the one-page view mode – fit to screen and full size.  Fitting the page to the screen is good, but it’s difficult to read the text in the mail.  So in order to read the text, I have to zoom in.  Well, the actual size is way too large.  I have to “drag” the page around just to read the text.  Very very inconvenient.  A variable zooming bar would be much better.

The final thing that I noticed is that the new interface uses double-clicking for certain functions.  Double-clicking is not a very familiar thing to most web users.  But it does make the application seem more like a desktop application.  It takes a little getting used to but is actually fairly intuitive once you get used to it.

What’s Next?

Well, I still can’t talk much about their real mail processing service since it’s only open to students, military, and nonprofits.  They did announce that their pay account will be coming in November and will be available to everyone.  Come on guys.  Can’t it be sooner?

For those of you who are looking to find out more, you should check out their demo, their pricing, and definitely their forum, which contains more information on their services.

Overall, it’s a big step for MPM to change their UI to something more refreshing.  I hope to see more improvements.  I’m definitely interested in how this social mail sharing that they talked about works.

Other than some cosmetic changes, they added a few extra details to the plan, which is a welcome.  For the basic plan, you get 150 receipts scanned a month.  For classic and business, you get 500 and 1000, respectively.  The Business Plan replaces the former Express Plan and costs $10 less per month.  These are likely the most significant changes.  Shoeboxed has written additional information about the new pricing in an updated post.

Overall, the new pricing is a welcome change.  However, as a potential buyer, I have spent some time perusing the web site and finding answers to questions that I have.

Consistently Confusing

The marketing is still confusing to me.  Here is the new pricing plan screenshot:

Compared to the old one, they did a better job specifying more detailed information here. Unfortunately, I don’t even get to see this plan listing until I go to Step 3 of the trial sign up from http://start.shoeboxed.com.  During this time, steps 1 and 2 have already asked for my highly personal information such as name, username, password, and my physical address.  This is a real barrier.  Better to show me the plan and have me choose one first before asking for my personal info.  Sell me before you sell me.

On top of that, what’s more confusing is the old pricing information on their main website and the new pricing on start.shoeboxed.com.  The first time, I read the September Newsletter, I immediately went over to the web site to see the pricing plan and what other things have changed.  What I get is the old pricing plan.  I got confused.  Which one is the real one?  So now, there are two sign up pages.  Which one do I go to?  Then, the new pricing blog post mentioned about “work-in-progress” on their pricing page.  This is too much.  If you want to announce the new pricing on the blog, make sure that the entire web site is consistent and ready to go.  Halfway-finished marketing is a deal breaker for me.

In addition, I noticed that there are two websites – the main shoeboxed.com and start.shoeboxed.com.  Which one is the real website for me?  I would think it’s the first one.  But then again, the new pricing is on the latter site.  I’m lost.  And clicking on the Shoeboxed logo on start.shoeboxed.com in hopes of returning to the home page took me to… the start.shoeboxed.com home page.  Not only am I lost, I got nowhere else to go except typing in a new website and going somewhere else that actually want my money.

Second Impression Still Matter

This is my second time checking out Shoeboxed and I am still not sold.  The sign up page was not well done to capture my attention and the money in my pocket.  If I were a normal user, I would have given up on Step 1.  If not, Step 2 did a great job to turn me away.  Since I am doing a semi-review of this service, I took it to step 3 just to see the pricing plan.

I’m hoping to see how the new pricing page will look on their main website.  Perhaps third time’s a charm.

Sending Postal Mail

Traditionally, we send postal mail by writing the letter, sealing it in an envelope, licking the stamp, and putting it in the mailbox for delivery.  As computers become more commonplace, we begin typing our letters in Microsoft Word and then print it out to mail.  This practice continues to be the current trend over the past decade or so.

Problems with Sending Postal Mail

You would think that there’s not much anyone can do to reduce environmental footprint when it comes to sending postal mail.  Yes, you can use recycled paper (paper fiber can only be recycled about 3 times only) and envelopes.

You can send email instead of postal mail.  But the issue remains when you are required to send postal mail.  There are still 15% of people out there in the US who do not have Internet access, according to a study that is posted in one of Postful’s blog articles.  In addition, there is a large number of international mail getting delivered everyday.  International mail costs more money for you, wastes more environmental resources, and takes longer to get delivered.

Sending Postal Mail Online

One innovative way to sending postal mail is by doing it online.  Imagine uploading a PDF or Word document to some web site.  Your letter gets printed out, stamped, and delivered via postal mail.  No need for printer, no need for tasting stamp flavors. And possibly the mail gets delivered faster than if you were to do it yourself.  Well, some services are already available that could take us towards this goal.

The possibilities are broad and life-altering.  Think about the situation where you need to mail a letter from the U.S. to someone in Italy.  If you were to do this yourself through standard first class airmail, it’d probably take a week or so.  Now imagine a service that has stores or locations around the world, one of them being in Rome, Italy.  You upload your document online to the service.  An employee or personnel in Italy prints out your document and mails it on your behalf.  Your mail would be delivered in a couple days and would cost cheaper.  At the same time, you reduce your environment impact since no airplane or ship is shipping your letter overseas.

So exactly who offers the service to send postal mail online?  To name a few, there are Postful, PostalMethods, Email2Postal, and NetGram.  Each has its own merits.  Some have locations worldwide, some don’t.  Some offer you the ability to send postal mail through email.  Wild Apricot wrote a good review on these web-to-postal mail services.  ReadWriteWeb wrote a more detailed review of Postful.  I plan to write one about Postful in the near future as well.

100% Digital Mail Process

Combine web-to-postal mail services such as Postful with online postal mailbox services like MyPostalMail, you can literally manage your postal mail entirely online from anywhere, anytime.  I believe these services will not only dramatically alter the way we use postal mail, but imagine the reduction in environment impact that these services can offer.  Convenience at the speed of Internet.  I only have one word to say about all this:  Wow!

Stopping the Direct Mail Marketers

People often think about calling the direct mail mailers to request that they stop sending you junk mail.  The steps for normal users like us involves the following:

1. Research and find out who is sending the junk mail to you.  It’s not always obvious who is the direct mail marketing firm that is responsible for handling direct mail advertising.  It may take some time for you to find the contact information.
2. Call the firm and request to have them stop sending you junk mail.
3. Take a break and repeat this procedure again for each company that you find.

Most of these companies will honor your request for about 5 years.  FCC states that after five years, these mailers may put you back onto the list and start sending you junk mail again.  Imagine the hassle of doing all this and having to repeat every five years.  Not exactly a productive use of your time.

Who’s Selling You Out?

Trying to stop junk mail after you are on their list is quite a hassle and sometimes difficult.  A better way is to understand exactly where they are getting your contact information and try to prevent the selling of your contact information.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you bought some products from an online e-commerce store.  You enter your billing and shipping information.  Wanting to make some side income, the store decides to secretly violate their privacy policy and sell your contact information off to direct mail marketers.  One day when you start getting some junk mail, you are very upset and you’re wondering who sold you out.  How do you find out and how can you prove that it’s done by this store?

Tagging Your Address

There is one sneaky but effective way that you can keep track.  It works similar to how postal mailboxes work.  You simply tack on a “mailbox number” to the end of your address.  For example, your current postal address is:

John Doe
1234 Maple Ave.
San Francisco, CA 90000

Now, what you do is tag a mailbox number to the end of your home address, like this:

John Doe
1234 Maple Ave. #100
San Francisco, CA 90000

Assign an arbitrary number per store where you have to enter your address.  For example, Amazon.com would get #100, Barnes & Noble would be #101, etc.  If you live in an apartment, it’s possible that you use tack on mailbox numbers to your apartment number, ie. “203-100″ or “A-203″.  The postman is usually able to know what’s going on and will still deliver mail to you properly.  Above all, make sure to keep a running tab of these numbers either on paper or in a spreadsheet.

Now, here’s the great part.  Someday, when you ever receive junk mail that gets sent to one of these “mailbox numbers”, you now know who exactly betrayed your trust.  You may even use the data as proof of evidence and be able to get recourse on the store that violated their privacy policy and betrayed your trust.

Alternative Options

Keeping track may only help you to identify the main culprit causing you grief, but it does not necessarily truly prevent junk mail from stopping.  You may still have to call the marketing firms individually to request that they stop.

Having said that, online postalmail mailboxes, postal mailboxes (PO Boxes), and mail forwarding services are all extremely viable alternatives that will save you time and hassle.  Of course, there is a monthly cost to these services whereas keeping track of your own mailbox numbers is free.

Fight Back

The important takeaway here is that by knowing who is selling you out, you have more options as to what you can do to stop junk mail.  And if you get frustrated enough, you can even fight back and get some money for troubles these people have caused you.

Accessing the military is an interesting proposition.  From the soldier’s perspective, they can continue to receive mail while they’re away from home, IF they have a home to begin with.  Many young soldiers don’t even have a permanent location when they are on duty; their homes are likely apartments that they move out of.  Family and friends who want to send them mail will have to mail it to an AFO/APO location.  This takes more time and wastes more gas.

Serving the military community not only helps the soldiers but also saves the environment.  Reducing mail forwarding and physical mail delivery to military locations around the world will conserve energy.  This is a great idea in my head and a win-win situation for everyone involved.

You can check more on their military mailbox accounts on their pricing page.  Unlimited mail scanning and page scanning is a pretty sweet deal.  But it looks like only US Armed Forces on active duty are accepted.

Scan and share your receipts

I learned about Shoeboxed on TechCrunch.  In Shoeboxed’s own words:

Shoeboxed is a free web site where you can store and organize all your receipts. Digital receipts are extremely useful, but scanning all that paper can be very time-consuming. To save you time, we can scan your receipts for you through our Receipt Mail-In program.

To see it in action, you can check out their quick demo.

First Impression

One of the more tedious things when running a business is keeping accurate records of petty cash transactions.  Receipts of large amounts are usually accounted for by the accountant or some accounting software, but cash transactions are more difficult to track.  In addition, these receipts must be kept for tax auditing purposes, up to seven years.

Shoeboxed seemed like a very interesting and useful application to use for dealing with these situations.  I perused their website to see what other things they offered.  Overall, my first impression was positive and I actually wanted to try out the service!

Pricing

I first took a look at their pricing to see how much it would cost me.  Similar to Pixily, their free account is mostly online-based.  You can scan and upload your own receipt online without cost.  In essence, a free account gives you a basic online storage location with some additional bells and whistles to export, share, and itemize your receipts.

For a more functional service, you will need to pay.  The basic plan starts at $10/month and limits the number of receipts per envelope to 50.  To have your receipts returned back to you after scanning, you will need to upgrade to either the $20/month classic plan or $60/month express plan.  The higher-end plans also give you more receipts per envelope (>500).

I find the price to be reasonable and the pricing structure to be similar to Pixily’s.

Other Goodies

Some other benefits that comes with your account includes:

• Unlimited free space
• Export to Quicken, Excel, PDF expense report, CSV
• Itemized tracking from receipts
• Spending charts and analytics
• An email address for online shopping

With the price and features, I am almost ready to sign up for my own account.  But what’s stopping me?

Think Twice Before Signing Up

My goals for using Shoeboxed really comes down to three things:

• Security. My financial receipts are very important to me.  In fact, if I lose them, big trouble looms over my head if I ever get audited.  My receipts must be secure.
• Convenience. Scanning my receipts into digital format really is about convenience.  I want to archive them forever (or at least up to seven years) and be able to find them and retrieve them whenever I need to.
• Time Saving.  Ultimately having someone scan my receipts and allowing me to easily retrieve them saves me time.  Saving me time = saving me money.

Shoeboxed seem to match these criteria, but as I looked deeper, I began to doubt.

“As soon as possible”

Perhaps I’m paranoid or even insecure, but a few issues about Shoeboxed’s service got me thinking.

Their Express Plan has a guaranteed processing time of 1 business day.  The other plans simply said “as soon as possible.”  I’m not exactly comfortable with that phrase.  It vaguely brings up memories of my dates back in the college days when the other person says, “I’ll call you later.”  How late is later?  How soon is soon?  Is one week too soon?  Sure, I can always upgrade to the express plan.  But then again, an additional $40/month just for this option is a bit overreaching.  I’m not asking for, nor do I need to have, my receipts scanned in one or two days.  Three to five days are actually ok for me, but at least let me know the time frame.

False Convenience

Shoeboxed is supposed to give me greater convenience right?  That’s what it looked like when I watched the demo.  You see all the receipts neatly categorized with pretty graphs showing me what I’ve spent.  But wait.  How did the system know what categories the receipts were in and how much they were?  Do they automagically extract this information when they scan or do they manually enter this information for you?  Both options don’t really sound very viable.

After watching further into the demo, I realized that I had to enter all this information myself.  So this service is supposed to save me time and offer me convenience.  Yet, I am imagining hours of work categorizing and itemizing the receipts.  It’d have been easier, faster, and safer if I had just entered all this information into my Quicken or Excel spreadsheet without having to scan the receipt at all.  The thought of having to tag information to the mail was a real motivation killer.

I could just forget about tagging and use the service as an online storage for my receipts.  But if that were the case, then most of the other features they offer me would be of no use.  No pretty charts, no itemized tracking, no exports.  The price would not justify the use if that were the case.

Image Matters

As I mentioned before, my receipts are important to me.  In fact, the thought of mailing them actually scares me a little.  There are horrifying statistics about how much mail is lost every year.  I only need my mail lost once for it to ruin my life.  Ok, that may be a bit dramatic, but it does show how serious I am about my receipts.  For businesses, this is also a big concern.  But understandably, if I am going to use this service, this is something that I do have to compromise on.

Assuming that I am fine with this, my next concern is seeing their photos on Flickr.  I’m all for businesses showing me some personal touch or giving themselves a friendly face… except when it comes to my finances.  Not to be harsh, but would you put $100,000 of your money at a bank where you see employees partying and having a great time in Vegas?  We all know this happens in the background, but it’s not really necessary to show me this side.  Image matters, especially when it comes to money.  I feel extremely uneasy and am not exactly sure whether these people can really take good care of my receipts.

This criticism sounds a little unfair.  After all, in the Web 2.0 age, isn’t it all about corporate transparency and being social?  Yes, I would tend to agree except… when it comes to my finances.  Mint, a Web 2.0 company that manages your finances, doesn’t do this.  Mint’s website is professional and projects a sense of security.  I am inclined to say that I feel more comfortable giving out my personal data to Mint than to Shoeboxed.

My Decision

Although I feel that Shoeboxed is a great service, I just can’t shake off the image they project about how they represent themselves.  My money and finance are very important to me, and because of that, I decided not to sign up.

However, if you simply want to digitize your receipts and have the time to tag them, then I would tell you to give Shoeboxed a chance.  If these receipts are for business or are important to you, then I’d suggest looking elsewhere.  Pixily does document scanning and seems more professional.  I’d probably go with them in this particular case.

As always, do your research before making your choice.

Meanwhile, I would love to hear about your experience if you can get an account.  Their online demo of their mail management system seems a little bit basic and simplistic, but I do like the user interface and how the mail is displayed.  I am sure they will add more features as time goes.  It will be interesting to test out the real image quality by sending yourself some mail.

So if you happen to be a student, a military personnel, or a non-profit, take a look to see how you can view your postal mail online and save the environment at the same time.

Usually, to stop companies from mailing you junk catalogs and mail, you’d have to do the research and write them opt-out letters.  In addition, these requests must be renewed/refiled once every 5 years.  The federal law allows companies to start mailing you again after 5 years is up.

When you think about the time involved, the stamps you need to lick, and the letters you must write and deliver, you might find that using one of those paid services is not so bad after all.  MyJunkTree offers a 3 year subscription for $20 (is that per year or per 3 years?).

With an online postal mailbox and paperless billing, my belief is that your normal mail and junk mail will be reduced by 90% or more.  However, your primary residence still receives mail right?  Services like MyJunkTree will likely help you out on this front.

There are actually a few services that does this for you.  I will not discuss companies that offer digital archiving of your photos, videos, etc.  We focus specifically on companies that work on papers. Today, I want to introduce one that I recently came across.

“Put your paper docs online in 3 to 5 days”

I recently read about Pixily from a blog post on WebWorkDaily.  Considering that it has to deal with paper (and postal mail to some extent), I took a quick tour of its website.  In Pixily’s own words, copied directly from their web page:

Pixily is an online service that helps you save time, space and money by making your paper and digital documents available at your fingertips. You no longer need to deal with paper clutter and don’t have to worry about not finding an important document when you need it. Pixily combines your paper and digital documents online in a secure location, making them available to you from anywhere. With Pixily, you can search your documents for any keywords, securely share your documents, and easily organize your documents using Pixily’s labeling tools.

I went through their demo and checked out their pricing.

The Pixily Good

What immediately drew my attention was the “reverse” effect of Pixily’s service.  Online postal mailboxes receives mail, scans and puts the mail online, and allows you to read your postal mail online.  Pixily, on the other hand, makes you mail them your paper docs (which, in my particular context, refer to bills, statements, and other postal mail).  They then scan the docs and let you view your own docs online. For $15 a month, you can mail in an envelope filled with paper docs and have a maximum of 3000 pages scanned.  Their highest pricing plan goes up to $60 a month, which gives you 4 envelopes a month and 12,000 pages scanned.  Their lowest – free with 200 pages uploaded, but no free envelopes.

What I see good with this service is that you can take digital snapshots of all your old bills, statements, and old postal mail.  I certainly keep all my old bills in a box somewhere for 7 years in case I get audited by the IRS.  That comes up to quite a bit of paper docs hanging around collecting dust in my garage and closet.  I envision Pixily will make my life easier by putting all my docs in one place.

Once I have all my docs in digital format, I can shred and recycle the old paper, and save a tree while I’m at it.  Well, Pixily claims on their front page that I save a tree for every 10,000 pages that I recycle.

After this, all my mail will be in digital format.  Sounds like a great plan to reduce my mail and paper docs (now officially considered junk mail since I no longer need it anymore).

The Pixily Bad

There are several concerns I have about using Pixily.  I read a comment posted by a user saying that the service is great, but it’s inconvenient only getting 4 envelopes a month when you are on the high price plan.  Each additional envelope you want is an extra $15 each.  This user submitted to the forces of economics and decided to compile all his paper docs and mail them in together on a weekly basis.  However, if there are some documents that I would love to have scanned and digitized as soon as possible, then I must essentially pay $15 for that document.  This would be cheap if I am submitting a 300 page documents, but likely, it might be in the 10-50 page range.  They do offer a per sheet scanning for $0.15 per page.  So a 30 page document would be $4.50 plus postage.

Other than that, I really do have nothing bad to say.

How I would use Pixily

Realistically, for those of you who follow my advice so far, I foresee using this service for the first one or two months, especially when paired with an online postal mailbox solution that is much cheaper and eliminates the effort of having me to constantly forward my postal mail to Pixily.

So this is what I would actually do if I were a EarthMailFree reader:

• Sign up with Pixily for one month.  For $15, I can scan 3000 pages of my old bills and postal mail leftovers.  That should cover quite a lot of my own junk.  If I really do have more pages to scan, I can pay for a higher level plan.  I consider this to be a one-time deal for doing the work of scanning the docs for me.
• Meanwhile, I would sign up for an online postal mailbox at either Earth Class Mail or MyPostalMail.  It would take about a month or so to reroute my mail over to the new mailbox.  While I’m at it, I’ll sign up for paperless billing too.  After this, I foresee very little use of using the scanning service.
• Cancel my pixily account and then get all my mail scanned for cheaper monthly fees.  What’s more, I am helping to save the environment.

This is a rather specific use case.  For those who actually do get constant physical documents (invoices, payables, contracts, etc) and need those scanned, the service seems much more enticing.  However, if I were such a heavy user, then I do see that even 4 envelopes is insufficient for my needs.  The true cost of scanning additional sheets and using additional envelopes now becomes much higher than $60 a month.  Forces of economics once again dominate my choice.  Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to worry about such variable costs to begin with?

Final Words

Overall, I am impressed with Pixily.  I would recommend that you take a look and see if it fits your needs.  But please note that I am not here to recommend whether these services are good or bad.  Do your own research.  If you actually do try it, I would love to hear about your experience, for better or worse.

Do note that in my reviews, I prefer not to discuss whether the business makes sense or whether it makes money. I am focused more on the environmental impact and on how services can create win-win situations for both the users like us and the environment at the same time.  I leave business criticisms up to others.

Online Postal Mailboxes

Wouldn’t it be great if you can get the best of both worlds?  Imagine a postal mailbox that acts like a traditional mailbox offered by USPS or UPS Store, and allows you to see your mail online in full digital color.  You never have to drive to check your mail or go to different websites just to grab a copy of your bills and statements.  Well, imagine no further, for in this day and age, such services actually exist.  I call them online postal mailboxes.

Now, there are very few of these services that exist in the U.S.  Of the few, I would like to specifically talk about the two that I believe are worth taking the time to look into – Earth Class Mail and MyPostalMail.com.

Earth Class Mail

Earth Class Mail started sometime near the end of 2005.  It has went through several name changes and rebranding such as Document Command and Remote Control Mail.  Earth Class Mail gives you many locations in the US to choose from.  Most of the locations are PO Boxes.  Currently, they have 5 non-PO Box locations:

• Beaverton, OR
• Seattle, WA
• San Francisco, CA
• West Hollywood, CA
• New York, NY

Their lowest monthly price is $13.95 per month and the “premium” locations listed above are extra costs, ranging from $4.95/month for Beaverton to $24.95/month for New York.  These premium addresses are more expensive because they have an address that looks more professional than a PO.  This is very good if you are using your address for business or to make yourself look important.

Given what I discussed earlier, if your goal is to reduce junk mail, then getting a PO Box is more than plenty to reduce your trash mail.  In addition, you get to check your mail in your pajamas.  Save paper, save gas, save the environment.  This is a definite win-win deal.

Earth Class Mail has received some press coverage, from people such as TechCrunch to David Pogue on the NY Times Blog.  If you search for “earth class mail blog reviews”, you will find out more about what other people have to say about them.

MyPostalMail

Another upcoming star in this arena is MyPostalMail.  MyPostalMail is getting ready to launch its first location and is offering its basic plan for FREE.  Yes, you read it right.  Their basic plan gives you almost the same service that Earth Class Mail offers you.  MyPostalMail only offers professional addresses (non PO Box addresses), which are already included in the plan with no additional charge.  In addition, they also lets you select your own mailbox number.  I can already see some of you wanting to get your hands on that lucky (or perhaps unlucky?) number of yours.

Now, this all sounds great, but there is one caveat.  They currently only offer free accounts to students, military personnel, and non-profit organizations.  That means if you’re currently looking to have a mailbox for business, you will have to go to Earth Class Mail or somewhere else.

Another thing that MyPostalMail does not give you is the ability to receive courier packages.  Earth Class Mail gives you this option.  For the premium addresses, they plan to give you a will-call option to pick up your packages.  This was slated to be available in Spring of 2008, but Earth Class Mail’s website shows that it’s still not available yet.  Although this option sounds great, you also must pick a location close to you and drive there.  If you are driving to pick up the packages and mail, then you might as well choose a traditional rental mailbox that is closer to you.

Other Online Mailbox Options

There are other rental mailbox stores that offer you very basic online services as part of their traditional mailbox rentals.  With those services, you tend to pay more for both the mail forwarding and the physical mailbox itself that you will not need.  But if it fits you, perhaps this may be a better option.  Do the research and shop around.  You can always sign up for a month to see how it works before you fully relocate all your mail over.  This way, you can test out the services.  You can even sign up for more than one service at a time.  USPS does not restrict you on how many locations you can have to receive your own mail.

If you have tried any of online postal mailbox services, please comment on your experience and feedback.