This is indeed a good conversation starter/continuer on alternative ways to handle our currently paper based communications. And yet it depends so much on people/businesses shifting to a very different way of doing what at the moment is a simple, ingrained, habitual part of their day do day lives. Zumbox feels more “Come over here and things will be better” rather than “Let’s work with what you’ve got, shifting it in a more positive direction.” I think that change happens easier, faster when it’s done from a vantage point of the customer, rather then from an already there, come to where we are point of view.

If you and a friend sign up for your Zumboxes, you can send digital letters to one another like email, only it’s tied to your physical address. Not too much value there. But if you bank with Wells Fargo and IF Wells Fargo starts to use the service, you can opt to receive your statements in your Zumbox as opposed to paper or electronic billing.

E-billing is OK but it has its drawbacks. You get notified by email, but you basically have to manage a separate mailbox for each bill e.g. each bank, utility, telecom, cable co., etc. You have to login to each to actually get your e-statement. At least that’s been our experience. We have it down to a system, but it’s far from ideal.

This article in GreenBiz has some great info about the problem: http://www.greenbiz.com/feature/2008/10/20/e-billing-most-overlooked-green-practice. Though Con Edison has been actively marketing and encouraging its customers to go paperless, less than 5% of its 3M customers have adopted it over the past two years. We’ve heard from other big companies about this issue, and adoption is the biggest hurdle. It’s just not easy enough to go paperless.

If the major catalog and direct marketing companies start to use Zumbox, you should be able to sign up there, as well…and hopefully opt out of getting the paper versions. So if they are going to send you paper junk mail anyway, you may as well opt to get it digitally. And then, theoretically, you should be able to block receipt of it altogether.

Either way, it’s clearly not as wasteful to get your magazines, catalogs, and junk mail digitally.

We have no interest either way. We know a couple people who are involved with the company, which we stated in the post. And we have an appreciation for any entrepreneurial venture that marries technology with sustainability. Not to mention a private alternative to a grossly inefficient and wasteful government monopoly like the USPS.

There has to be a better way. Zumbox may not be it. That remains to be seen. But it may get people and the government thinking about ways to waste fewer trees and taxpayer dollars on an antiquated system.

It’s the old 80/20 rule, if not 95/5. Look in your own mailbox. The vast majority of transactional mailers are major corporations that have real IT departments and have to meet real regulatory compliance. They’re not going to opt to insert their privacy-sensitive billing records into ultra-low-security zumbox accounts when they have their own secure electronic billing infrastructures already in place that comply with all the regulatory requirements. Zumbox doesn’t even claim that their system is compliant with a single one of these regulatory *requirements* – they’re not even consciously aware of them, it appears. If all you care about is junk mail and you don’t truly intend to get financial billers then why bother to build expensive data centers and pay for expensive compliance programs?

Customers who won’t opt in for electronic billing because they prefer paper are not going to opt for Zumbox over their own bank’s or cable company’s electronic options. It’s simply preposterous to think that Zumbox is going to change consumer behavior.

All that means that the only “mailers” that may augment their paper mailings (but not likely stop their paper mailings because, as you point out, they still pull economically) are direct marketers, who don’t have to comply with significant regulatory compliance like billers do. Zumbox does not have a *single* major bank or utility company or any major 1st class mailer using their system… why should any consumer sign up for an account to receive only spam??? Their IT sophistication is obviously very low to not even understand how difficult it is to get any bank to push privacy-sensitive information into any other company’s computer system, much less an entertainment media-oriented startup with only $3M of funding. Get real, Max. You really think your bank is going to give you the option of using your Zumbox account to get their bank statements? As Seth and Amy would say, “REALLY?!”

This company is treating privacy and regulatory compliance like a joke. Neither the founders or the investors in Zumbox did any sort of due diligence of what real mailers will require – trust me, this just happens to be the field I work in. They are representing ecological benefits when none will transpire if no major mailers shift to using their system – and that’s just not going to happen; doing so borders on fraud if not just simply false advertising. Some people call this “greenwashing.” This company isn’t even ready to prepare to get ready for prime time… they seem utterly clueless about privacy laws, SAS70, Sarbanes-Oxley, GLB, and a raft of other regulatory requirements that would need to be met before any major corporation would ever use their system for transaction mail, legal correspondence, tax, insurance or any of the things that we as consumers would consider “important mail.” You shouldn’t fool yourself – or your blog readers – to think that you’re helping the ecology much.

[Excerpted from my response to you on TechCrunch.]