Mail a Letter Online

Thanks!

How this is not a standard USPS offering (or other national mail service offering) is well beyond me. There is absolutely no benefit in having a private industry do this, IMHO. I do realize that HN, being the pro-business site it is will simply down vote me to oblivion, so before you do...thanks?

In Poland the law theoretically mandates that a digital signature is just as good as a pen-and-paper one. But, when dealing with banks, one quickly finds that the law is one thing and the stone wall of your bank is another.

Here's how a typical discussion unrolls:

Bank: "To do X or Y, we require you to visit us in person or provide a written statement".

Me: "Here's my statement with a digital signature, attached as a PDF."

Bank (ignoring the PDF): "To do X or Y, we require you to visit us in person or provide a written statement".

Me: "The law says (specific citation goes here) that I have just provided a written and signed statement. Here it is again."

Bank (ignoring the PDF): "To do X or Y, we require you to visit us in person or provide a written statement".

By the way, I had this kind of stupid back-and-forth with mBank, which tries to position itself as a "modern and innovative" bank.

The only next step is to sue, but who would bother.

I've never heard of a service like this. Seems simple but kind of ingenious. Thanks for sharing, op.

My first internship in 2009 was for a company with a similar business model in the UK. We developed a Windows application, a web application and an API which allowed letter templates to be uploaded and then sent out to large mailing lists using mail merge.

Most of our big customers were real estate agencies where it felt pretty spammy but the selling point was that people were more likely to open a personalised letter compared to an email. Some of our marketing focused on poking fun at people using franking machines!

I remember a more interesting customer that sent out parking violations to individuals. Along with the basic mail merge, the letters would include images of their vehicles parked where they shouldn't be.

The biggest problem we had was with consistent print quality. We sent batch files to be printed out by different printing companies but there would often be problems with things like alignment and image quality. Even though we had test letters sent to our office every day we'd always be stressed out when a new customer was coming on board and testing the service - they'd often receive a couple of dodgy letters!

In the end the company was absorbed by a larger IT business - I think they just wanted the developers. They wanted me to come work full time for them but I went back to University to finish off my degree and did some part-time remote work for them. Can't find any trace of the company online now.