Usps

Apparently, Smart Shopper has chosen to ignore my prohibitory order, as I received mail from them yesterday. (This is really exactly what I expected, since the type of discounted mailing permit they’re using requires mailing to all addresses in the town.) So, I forwarded the mailpiece off to the Prohibitory Order Processing Center, where if all goes well they’ll get a court order requiring compliance, and if they continue to mail me they’ll be in contempt of court. (39 USC 3008 (d), (e))

I am pleased to announce that I just received a copy of prohibitory order 2014665, making it illegal for Smart Shopper to send us mail, starting in 30 days and lasting for 5 years.

National Grid finally updated their billing system to allow for email billing instead of snail mail billing (although they haven’t advertised it as far as I see). Now the only paper statements/bills I get are those for my mortgage loans, where the bank says that they can’t make those electronic “due to compliance reasons”.

So, I’m one step closer to going mail-free.

Today I finally got a chance to check out the completely-redone Charlton Public Library. It’s quite impressive. One interesting note is that due to their snazzy new computer system (they finally have a web-based catalog), they no longer accepted my library card that I got when I was 8. The card has a little metal plate in it that they would stamp onto a due-date card somehow, back in the day. It feels like it’s some sort of rare collector’s item now or something.

On Wednesday, June 27, land got transferred into our name. However, despite the deed clearly naming us “Peter S. Cooper, Jr.” and “Jessica Jane Cooper”, the registry of deeds indexed us under “Peter S. Cooper” and “Jessica Jane”, omitting the final part of each of our names. I don’t think that this is really a big deal, since it’s just the indexing to find us and not the legal name of ownership (as far as my understanding goes).

When I logged onto my bank’s web site this past weekend, I learned that they’re now finally offering electronic statements.

I’m now one significant step closer to not needing a physical mailbox at all.

My hobby web site on sending junk mail back to the Post Office is rather quickly climbing the rankings on Google for relevant queries. It’s kind of fun watching the analytics data and watching people find my site for some very relevant search queries. This project is partly ending up being an experiment in creating a site about an obscure topic and seeing how people find it, which is kind of interesting in and of itself.

I put together a web site with the information I’ve learned about refusing unwanted mail.

Refuse Your Mail: You don’t have to take it anymore.

Maybe this will be the start of a huge nationwide trend that’ll make a difference in Postal Service policies and get major media coverage.

Or maybe it’ll just be a cute site only read by me and a couple Random Strangers on the Internet.

(Edited afterward: This was originally posted with its own domain name, but that has since expired, and it’s now on a subdomain of cooperjr.name.)

I actually received a letter back from the Postmaster today, pretty much confirming what I thought. They said that they have to deliver all mail with a correct address and postage, and suggested I write the people sending me mail to tell them to stop mailing me. I’ve done this quite a bit, but it’s a pain to mail everybody, and it doesn’t stop saturation mailings (where a place pays the post office to just stick a copy in everybody’s box, and the address is just “Postal Customer” so they can’t just not print an address label for me). They also reminded me that I can refuse mail being sent to me by marking it Refused and putting it back (which is what I’ve been doing all along, and no doubt the Postmaster knows it).

On March 28, I wrote a letter (like, an actual physical one) to my postmaster (again, the actual physical one, responsible for delivery of physical mail to Charlton, MA) asking them to not deliver me mail from the six addresses that had sent me the junk mail that was in the stack next to me at the moment.

Since that time, I have continued to receive mail from those address.