On Internet, You’ve Got (Paper) Mail

Years ago, I had a computer student I’ll call Mrs. K, whose specialty was negativity. Her ability to find fault with absolutely anything amounted to a gift.

Glorious fall foliage? Too much raking. “The Sound of Music”? Manipulative, sappy, two-dimensional. Mother Teresa? Overhyped.

It must have been a relative of Mrs. K, then, who came up with Earth Class Mail. It’s a service that scans your incoming United States Postal Service mail and displays it on a private Web page. In other words, you avoid everything that would have bothered Mrs. K about paper mail: clutter, paper cuts and the risk of anthrax.

O.K., there are a few more substantial reasons why you might want an online mailbox whose address never changes. Maybe you travel a lot, you live in an R.V. or you spend your winters in Florida. Maybe you’re occasionally stationed overseas. Maybe you’d like all your mail stored online for easy retrieval forever.

Companies may like the concept because it assists with record-keeping and storage, or because it keeps the mail coming even through mergers, moves or downsizings.

In any case, it’s an intriguing concept. Here’s how it works.

At earthclassmail.com, you sign up for a new mailing address, which you distribute to your chosen correspondents. You probably don’t want to fill out an official postal service change-of-address form; magazines, catalogs and packages, for example, are a little tough to scan.

If they do arrive, the company scans only the front and back of magazines, or the shipping label of the package. In other words, you probably want this to be a secondary address, not your only one.

Next thing you know, you start getting e-mail messages that say, “You have new mail. Estimated number of pages: 2 pages or less,” or whatever. There’s even a little scanned picture of the front of the envelope (or the writing side of a postcard).

When you click the link, you go to a private Web page. After you log in, you see your In-box. You see a little image of each piece of mail, along with its dimensions, weight, date, date of arrival and so on.

You also see several buttons, which provide you the possible options for dealing with your mail individually or all at once:

“Scan” tells the company to slit open the envelope and scan the contents. This takes time (one day) and may cost money (more on this shortly). You can opt to have every incoming envelope auto-scanned; that saves you time but, if you start getting junk mail, could cost you money.

Once the scanning is finished, another e-mail message lets you know it’s ready. To read the scan, you click a link to download a PDF version of the scanned mail, the front and back of every page. The PDF is extremely easy to read, file, forward and store, but it would be nice if you could also read the mail right there on the Web site without having to download and open something. It would also be nice to get the scans by e-mail. (The company says it doesn’t offer that option because e-mail isn’t secure enough, but why not let the customer make that call?)

“Recycle” is great for junk mail. It’s very satisfying to send such mail into its next life with a single click.

“Shred” is for mail that you want to make sure nobody else will ever see again.

“Ship” tells the company to put the mail back in the delivery system (in this case, DHL). This is for items you want to hold in your hot little analog hands: a letter from Grandma, a photo, a check. You can have something shipped to a different person, too, like your lawyer or accountant.

If you’re a little queasy about the thought of total strangers going through your personal correspondence, the company wants you to know that its employees have special security clearance. They wear pocketless uniforms, and they’re under constant video surveillance.

They’re not allowed to bring anything at all into the facility: no phones, cameras, not even pencils or pens. The company seals the ports on all the computers on site, to prevent workers from copying the scans.

If, despite all that, you’re still queasy, well, you probably shouldn’t sign up.

Over all, the service works as advertised. It’s not a total joy, however.

CONTINUED

---

1 | 2 | Next >