How The USPS Sells Your New Address To Anyone Who Pays

An interesting article which I suspect most recent movers have no idea happens when one submits a Change-of-Address request with the US Postal Service -- and the USPS is making big money off the deal, too:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtan...-to-opt-out/

thanks wt1, We plan on moving in about a year, so this information will be handy. We've lived in the same place for 30 years, and you can imagine the junk mail we get.

And if you change your address online, the PO charges you a dollar.

Here's how to find out who sells your name to whom -- when you subscribe to magazines, or services, etc., use a different middle initial each time, and keep track of them. If you subscribe to Popular Mechanics as Yak J. Boomer, make a note, and if you get nuisance letters from an insurance company addressed to Yak J., you KNOW beyond a doubt what happened, and you can raise Cain accordingly.

This may be useful as well: Stopping Unsolicited Mail from the Federal Trade Commission.

For many years, USPS has been selling address information for direct marketers. My non-profit organization would also get junk mail from USPS trying to peddle the info. Since we don't do fund-raising, we had no need for the information.

Because I used to travel a lot to other cities for my work, I would maintain a temporary local residence/office for extended stays. The temporary residence would change every few years, and I would submit a change of address form. I actually looked forward to all the junk mail that came afterwards. There would be some pretty useful discount coupons and freebies, as well as a couple of PNCs on the junk mail. Of course, maybe that's all changed now...

Wow, I didn't know that. I had always done it the old-fashioned way and dropped the form off at the post office, checking out the new stamp issues while I was at it.

I avoid doing anything online with USPS. Each time they redesign/revise their website, it only gets slower. Even getting half a dozen zip codes is unbelievably time-consuming compared to 10 years ago because of the silly screen redraws. Oddly enough, I find that Yahoo gets me the 9-digit zip codes much faster.

I didn't even know Yahoo had a zip+4 finder, but I just tried it. I do like that it doesn't take you to a "new" results page. Unfortunately, it doesn't standardize the street address, either. I use the USPS lookup several times a day in my work, both for the zip+4 and to verify addresses.

I can see it now - Dear Mr Yak J Boomer, you may have won $10,000,000 in the publishers clearing house . . .

That is correct regarding Yahoo; good point. I basically am assuming I have the correct address and only need the zip+4.

Not only that, but there's a big consumer warning going out right now that unsuspecting movers who try to web search for the USPS Change of Address site get redirected to a for-profit site that charges many times the going rate for an address change and only after a month or so of direct billing to their credit card, do they realize they've been duped:

http://www.nbc12.com/story/22766205...-warns-about

Also, as recited in the news story above, for a legitimate Change of Address you may pay the $1 fee to the USPS on-line OR you may go to a USPS office and request a change of address card and make the change at NO CHARGE. The $1 fee is a profit making venture for the USPS and postal regulations now prohibit these Change of Address cards from laying on the counter, as a customer must specifically request it from the postal clerk who is supposed to talk the customer into doing it online for the $1 fee.

My local post office (in a small college town) probably gets tired of such requests, so they have (contrary to postal regulations) laid out a number of the Change of Address cards on their counter. I took one recently and noticed the following statement contained on it -- specifically that it costs neither the consumer nor the USPS anything to print these up -- apparently the advertising sponsors pay for all of the printing costs!

Sounds like another example of you doing the work for them for free, but getting charged a fee, for something that used to be free for the user and someone else got paid for.
Change of address forms.

I get those handy little change of address booklets with new apartment leases as well, along with lots of scuzzy adverts for everything else(scuzzy as in every rental furniture and check cashing place there is).

You can also ask your mail carrier for a change of address card and return it to him/her.