Re: Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Mon, 6 Feb 2006, Dude VanWinkle wrote:

> On 2/6/06, Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com> wrote:
> > Nothing wrong with that. In England, we have First Class Post and Second
> > Class Post. We also have a Bulk post rate, and a bulk sorted post rate,
> > and oodles of others.
> >
> > This is a step twoards the system I've been advocating. An economics
> > solution to an economics problem.
>
>
> SO, I have to go through the same filters that are in place today, but
> I can pay to sidestep these if I want to. Which is basically me
> admitting that my message is Spam, and would be caught in your filters
> (which are getting better all the time IMO).

Actually, if you're willing to pay for your message to get through, then 
you're saying that it's really important (compared to a message that 
you're not willing to pay for). That isn't saying that it's spam.

Let me give an example.

Suppose an ISP has a million paid subscribers, and 100,000 of those give
an AOL address as their primary address. Now, suppose that ISP needs to
send an email to all their users, announcing a price increase (or
decrease, or something). That ISP would be very keen for people to receive
that email. And (even though it's going to a million people) it isn't
spam, because there's an ongoing business relationship, and the email is
about an important element of that. But the AOL anti-spam filters might 
filter out that email (the AOL anti-spam filters have no way of knowing 
about the ongoing business relationship). So that ISP might well decide 
that it's worth paying $1000 (assuming 1c per email) to ensure that their 
email doesn't get blocked.

Even if the ISP isn't planning to do a bulk email to users, it can be 
extremely annoying to receive an email from a user that requires and 
answer (e.g., "I think you double-billed me") and to have no way to answer 
that email. Well worth 1c to ensure that the answer to that gets through.
 
> Just sounds like a way for AOL/Yahoo to make money off their users
> spare time, while delivering them more stuff they dont want and
> degrading the service (and quality of emails) received. Guess you get
> what you pay for with a free email account.

Actually, it's a way for AOL/Yahoo to contnue to deliver free email to 
their users, while at the same time letting people pay for the delivery of 
email that the sender regards as worth paying to deliver.


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