Mail, Mail Go Away

By Matt Wood in News on Oct 20, 2006 12:03PM

Fed up with all you fancy pants online bill-payers, the U.S. Postal Service is removing hundreds of street-corner mailboxes from Chicago. They conduct quarterly surveys of mailbox use, and remove those that collect fewer than 25 pieces of mail each day. They blame the internet, with email and online bill pay replacing the need for most first-class mail, and also cite security concerns for removing boxes near potential terrorist targets like the Sears Tower.

This is counterintuitive, but it seems like removing those boxes would hurt the postal service's business even more. Having the convenience of being able to drop a piece of mail on your way to work at least makes it likely that you'll still consider that an option. If you aren't lucky enough to have reliable mail pickup from your building and have to go to an actual post office, or if you don't feel comfortable mailing personal stuff from work, Chicagoist thinks you'd be even more likely to find another way to get it done. We already pay all of our bills online, and of course send more email than most spammers. But if the mailboxes go away, how will we send all that Justin Timberlake fan mail?