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Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email.

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Re: Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email.

#41

Post by phlo »

Interestingly, they are also attacking the "problem" of snail mail from another angle:

ePostOffice [1] is an online control panel and inbox, allowing recipients to select how they'd like to receive communications [from participating senders]. It's in a limited pilot phase right now, but seems promising.

A final interesting tidbit: Swiss Post has a financial subsidiary called PostFinance which handles most of Switzerland's wire transfers. Most invoices include a (machine-readable) payment slip. OCRing that payment slip and importing it into PostFinance's e-banking platform seems like an interesting idea. The different divisions have begun to more closely integrate their services, and recently launched a large campaign promoting the variety of Swiss Post's offerings. We'll see how it goes.

[1] http://www.post.ch/en/post-startseite/post-privatkunden/post...

Re: Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email.

#42

Post by smoe »

pellpaul wrote: post #4
rahulcap wrote: post #2

As a former user and fan of Outbox, it makes me both happy and jealous to see the Swiss post take this on. It makes so much sense. Too bad the USPS is so dependent on junk mail to ever try this. Or..if they did they would mess it up by blasting your "e-post-box" with e-junk-mail.

Hey I can understand one would like that service, but the price at which they are providing it is really high! As a swiss citizen, I'd never subscribe :s

I wouldn't subscribe whilst in Switzerland either, but I'am considering using their service while traveling. Since I only have to actually open about 2-3 Mails per month, I think the price is ok. At least a don't know anybody who would (and I trust to) handle my mails for ~36 CHF per month except my parents. But I feel kind of bad using them as my "secretaries".

Re: Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email.

#44

Post by lifeisstillgood »

anu_gupta wrote: post #12
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #7

That is where all this talk about "what will the Post Office do in the age of ..." goes - they will help me manage all this stuff and rubbish. I will trust the post office to open and scan my mail, far more than I will JRandomStartup. And then they can handle a one stop bill payment service for me, and as I trust them, they can generate a CA and I will put it in my phone and suddenly they own the customer experience…

> I will trust the post office to open and scan my mail, far more than I will JRandomStartup Interesting, my feeling is the opposite - I've lost count of the number of envelopes I've received that have been partially opened up to check if there are credit cards etc inside. I seem to remember seeing that one postal worker a day is caught stealing mail in the UK. I would absolutely not trust the UK Post Office to open…

but, JRandomStartup and PO will both draw from the same pool of people willing to do a shit job for low pay. In that pool the number of people willing to open a Xmas card for the cash inside is x%. The same x% chance must apply whomever opens your mail.

Re: Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email.

#46

Post by jagath »

ameister14 wrote: post #43

Didn't Outbox try this and shut down a couple of months ago?

Yes. According to the Outbox blog "senior leadership of USPS made it clear that they would never participate in any project that would limit junk mail and that they were immediately shutting down our partnership" http://blog.outboxmail.com/post/74086768959/outbox-is-shutti...

Re: Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email.

#47

Post by preek »

Being self employed and living a very nomadic life (1.5 years with all my belongings in a 70l backpack), this service has been incredibly useful for me since there are a lot of services requiring me to have a snail mail address. If you are a Swiss citizen, I can only recommend getting an account.

NB: I have been in the same bureau as the original project lead and consulted in several aspects of the project.

Therefore I have been a customer for the last 4 years, with three years not being associated with the Swiss Post as employee anymore. I couldn't be happier with the service as it provides me with snail mail addresses in four countries whilst I only did a single payment for those - now I only pay by mail volume.

Re: Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email.

#48

Post by preek »

eddywebs wrote: post #11

Wondering how the privacy is taken into equation while scans are done of the mail.

The scanning center is based in one of the three post relay centers that Switzerland has. To get into one of these, you need a batch.

Then, inside this building (which is huge, like three soccer arenas), there is a glass building that has yet another batch only access with revolving doors that only has space for one person.

So getting the mail out of there (aka stealing) will be hard.

As for the concern that some person other than yourself will read your mail, that is true. As a customer, you will sign a voucher that you are ok with specific Swiss Post employees being able to read your mail.

Re: Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email.

#49

Post by sliverstorm »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #25
psuter wrote: post #21

Indirectly related, but can anyone recommend a service to do OCR+tagging of documents? I frequently run into situations where I know I have that important letter somewhere, but just cannot put my finger on it, then start daydreaming about grep'ing for it in ~/snailmail.db. A possibly good way to package this would be a smartphone app where I can scan my letters with the camera, and have them OCR'ed, tagged, and uploa…

I pay $45/year for Evernote; they OCR everything I put into them, and I put all of my paper mail into it. Also, I configured a fax number from Phaxio, which pushes the PDF right into Evernote (for those who won't email me something). It doesn't have automatic tagging, but the OCR is very good.

I was using Evernote, but then I saw how much the upgrade is (and it is a subscription too). Is it worth it over the totally free OneNote?

I do see that OneNote mobile doesn't have OCR, but I wonder if you could rely on your desktop to perform OCR for you, and then the phone could search the results?

Re: Swiss Post scans your snail mail and sends it to you via email.

#50

Post by CountingCode »

digikata wrote: post #37
sivers wrote: post #8

For what it's worth, for anyone interested, I used this service for years, and they're great. Really nice if you're nomadic and want to have a steady mailing address. In the U.S., https://www.earthclassmail.com/ provides the same service. I think it is (or was) Earth Class Mail's backend software that is/was powering Swiss Post Box, when I was using it. Also great for having a U.S. mailing address for your business,…

What do services like this do with mailed documents for which you might want to retain as originals - contracts w/ physical signatures, grandama's handwritten letter, etc?

Earth Class Mail will deliver them. And not just documents, I've had packages delivered to ECM and had them hang on to them until I had an address to deliver it to. There's a storage fee, but it's nothing compared to the monthly fee.
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