Company: Remote Control Mail
Launched: Will launch early October
Funding: Closing Angel Round
Location: Portland, OR (development also in Russia)
Overview
RemoteControlMail will provide you with a permanent (snail) mail address, gather all of your incoming mail, scan (the outside), notify you of its existence (with the outside scan), scan the inside if you like (for a fee), and then either forward it to you or shred it, on your command.
You can sign up now for RCM. The service will begin working in a couple of weeks.
Who would want this? Anyone who moves a lot or maintains multiple residences. Businesses that need a physical mailing presence in another city. People who are concernced about identity theft (everyone should be). Or people who just want more cyber-control over their real world mail.
I spoke with the founder and CEO, Ron Wiener, today about RemoteControlMail’s launch a few days ago and got a better understanding of the service.
Dealing with real, actual (snail) mail isn’t very much fun. An endless and prodigious trail of junk mail comes through our mailbox (and incidentally, only 17% of it is ultimately recycled). As a country we get over 200 billion pieces of mail a year.
Remote Control Mail is the first company to try to solve this problem for us by virtualizing our real-world mail box.
Once you register, Remote Control Mail assigns you a permanent mailing address and you can then redirect all or some of your incoming mail to that address.
Upon receiving a piece of mail, RCM will scan the outside of the package or envelope and notify you of its existence via email or through the RCM website. You can choose to have the inside of the package scanned, and then either have the item forwarded to you (singly or grouped with other mail), or shredded and recycled.
An example of your RCM mailbox:
John Smith
RCM# 1234
14525 SW Millikan Way
Beaverton, OR 97005
Pricing
Basic pricing is $2.50 per month + $.10 per mail piece and $0.95 per package. RCM charges extra fees for forwarding, scanning ($10.-$.20 per page), shredding ($0.1 per ounce) and archiving. Link
Team
Ron Wiener, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Michael Miles, P.E., Director of Automation Technology
Brett Prochaska, Director of Software Development
Len A. Bayles, Chief Utility Player – Engineering
David L. Richardson, Director of Operations
Jeff Evans, Director of Marketing
Link
I wished this would work for Indonesia and probl. many other countries in this area. Here you even don’t dare to send anything important by mail as it just doesn’t arrive. The problem with junk mail must be very big in the USA to make a step like like this as private person. I wonder if people are willing to pay for a service like this, to take the time for notifying everybody. So if I understand well in the USA the government, credit card companies, banks etc. still using postal services that much for sending pin codes or what ever private data? I’ve seen some movies about identity thefts and it seems to be quite easy to take over someones identity. Tough through the Internet I see the same problem of course. Now if I read the web page of remote mail they took some serious meassurements to secure any incoming mail and to track down mail in process. And in case of people trying to send any mail to cause harm (terrorists) remote mail will be the first one to discover, how perfect. I guess many companies would choose for this option and willing to pay for, it will cost some jobs though at incoming mail departments I guess. I won’t go further here discussing privacy versus goverment (the right to sniff at your mail) however there is a point of course.
?
I guess their future will have 3D scanners to send me my Xmas present by mail
Mario,
Good comments. I think there is less of a concern here over outright theft from a mailbox (although it does happen, and has happened to me).
The biggest hassle is simply dealing with mail, period. I move a lot, and keeping addresses updated is a pain. RCM is probably just a little too expensive for me, but there is, I am sure, a large target market in the US for this product.
It’s also useful for Americans who live abroad but still get mail here. I’ve lived in London twice, and I would absolutely have used this service when I lived there (and probably would continue using it when I moved back).
Mike
I use Mail Boxes Etc. for this type of service. They don’t scan the mail, but they throw away junk mail and forward it wherever you are. I had my mail forwarded to one of the European countries on a monthly basis. I am back in the U.S., but have decided to keep my Mail Boxes Etc. address, as it’s so convinient (no need to update a long list of companies and services with my new address every time I move).
They should offer RSS feeds of your mail. Then I could process it like all my other “in” data.
Anyway, great idea!
these people are scam
dont even think about buying their services
they dont even answer emails
stay away!!!
George – Please contact us and let us know what problems you’ve had. support@remotecontrolmail.com
We are indeed live and processing customer mail every day. We have solutions for individuals as well as businesses.
Mike,
This seems like a great service. Very attractive especially for military members like myself. I have moved twice in the past year as well as spent most of that time deployed to the middle east. Having access to my mail online would be a great improvement. The only thing that stops me now, is that you can only have a Portland address. I am getting ready to move again, to New York, and I am planning on establishing a residency there. Anything more than a New York address would be a hassle now. Have you heard of any companies that do the same type of service with a New York mailing address?
WOW, twice in one year! You personally KNOW the delays and losses that can happen with a change of address!
I understand your concerns. We will be adding local addresses across the US in the coming months because some business users want to project a local presence, whether they are local or not.
A local address is not as crucial for many mobile individuals since they already rely on the freedom provided by cel phones and email. Now RCM can keep them in touch with their postal mail wherever they have connectivity. (more detail is available at the FAQ: http://www.remo...ail.com/faq.php)
We recommend that you use your residency address for the items you want to have delivered for ready access (DVD and magazine/catalog subscriptions) but use the RCM address for the important mail that you want to be able to access anytime/anywhere. It means you need to tell people you have a mailing address that is different than the physical address, and that you prefer that they use the RCM address.
From that point forward you will never need to notify them of an address change while you maintain the RCM account, no matter where you happen to be or move next.
As hurricane Katrina demonstrated, having your mail physically somewhere OTHER than local can actually be an advantage. Those people who were evacuated and relocated would still be able to access their mail if they could have signed up with RCM.
20 years from now the increased mobility of society may no longer care about the address.
These people are scam artists in a huge way! Ronald Weiner is on the list of fraudwatch international on a daily basis. He runs fake lottery , Nigerian Phish scams, etc….
Tom – whoever you are – your libelous aspersions are absurd. Whoever Ronald Wiener is (my name is Ron Wiener, I’m the CEO of Remote Control Mail), I don’t know him, he is not me, and neither of our names are in fact listed in the fraudwatch international database. My bio is on our website and I’ve had the privilege of running several venture-backed tech companies, as the editors of TechCrunch well know. You don’t get venture capital without going through a very thorough background check, I can assure you. My businesses have all been absolutely legitimate technology innovation enterprises. At this company and in my previous companies we’ve actually had a relaitonship with the FBI’s cybercrimes division and other law enforcement agencies in developing technologies to detect and *prevent* cybercrimes and mail fraud. I don’t know who you are but can imagine that the only reason you’d have for committing such libel of my reputation and our company’s is that you were the target of a fraud investigation which I or my associates may have assisted in prosecuting in the past. Why don’t you go ahead and give us your true identity so we can check *you* out, Tom?
Yes,
I think remotecontrolmail is a good idea.
I’m not confident about the present implementation.
They are not quick about answering e-mail.
Actually, I’m not sure they answer e-mail at all.
I tried calling their 866 sales number and got
routed to a company directory.
If I set up a sales phone line, I’d give the caller the
impression that it is a true sales line.
My worry is that if I routed all my mail to Oregon,
they would lack the resources to give the service
I paid for.
Answering the phone and e-mail is easy compared
to scanning and then multiplexing out an enormous
stream of snail mail.
If they don’t answer the phone or e-mail,
which is easy, how can I be confident that
they can do more difficult tasks?
I plan to check them out though with some
unimportant snail mail.
That is of course if they respond to my phone
call and 2 e-mails and help me setup an account.
After a few months,
If I determine they do a good job,
I’ll return here and post some positive comments.
-Dan
Dan,
I’m very sorry you didn’t find our responsiveness adequate. I asked customer service to look into the logs and they told me that they had no voicemail or email messages from you, but they did find you partially registered in our database and would contact you to see how they can help you in completing your account creation. If you have any specifics on when you may have left a voicemail or email for us we could investigate further in the logs to try and figure out why we never received your messages.
We do place an emphasis first on customer operations – i.e. inducting mail, scanning, forwarding, etc. – and have an outstanding record of meeting our standard of turnaround time on every single order we get. Where we are admittedly lacking in body count right now is in customer service phone coverage. Our customer base is growing faster than we can handle pre-signup inquiries, but we are definitely not stressing our capacity on the operational side. There’s still room for 50 million more pieces of mail in our central processing facility, which should last us quite a few years.
If I can help you directly in any way please don’t hesitate to call my direct line (ext 301) and I will personally handle it.
Cheers,
Ron
This is a great idea! I bought a house two years ago only to discover it’s old mail box had been taken down and placed in storage up in a loft over the garage. The US Postal Service at some point in time decided to get lazy and cease delivering mail in the neighborhood, now requiring all local residents to pick up their mail at a “courtesy” PO Box. The post office is only one block away; I certainly have no problem walking down there. However, the lobby doors are closed and locked after 4 PM. Most residents have their spouse, girl friend, or someone else pick up their mail. Being a single working guy who doesn’t really have any friends in the area to fetch my mail while I’m at work, I find it to be practically impossible to get my mail there unless I take a day off. At some point the local post master sent us all a letter insisting that we are strictly prohibited from having someone else pick up our mail on our behalf. This absolutely ticked me off.
Some of my friends in other areas live in appartment complexes that have a gang of locked outdoor mailboxes somewhere. I suggested the post office could install something similar to these right outside their building. This way those of us who can’t get to the post office during the day could pick up their mail right outside in the evening. I would even be willing to pay a rental fee for such despite being entitled to a courtesy box inside the post office. However, our local post office refuses to do this apparently because they are too lazy to even so much as walk outside and put our mail in a box we actually have access to.
I checked every post office in neighboring communities. Some are open until 4:30, but the extra 30 minutes is insufficient given the drive time being out of the way from my commute home from work. The best I was able to find was a nearby town’s post office that closes at 5 PM and leaves the lobby unlocked until the staff inside is ready to go home which is usually around 5:15 PM. That post office charges me $29.00 every six months to rent a post office box, which works out to $4.83 per month. Still I very frequently am unable to make it to the post office before they close. Often I miss them by just a minute or two, and typically only can get my mail once a week if I’m even that lucky.
I already am in the practice of scanning all of my financial statements, utility bills, etc. and saving them on my computer. I find this to be more convinient and certainly takes up less space than using a paper filing system. However, it is sometimes tedious being that I typically get my mail in large lump sums.
So instead of paying $4.83 to have this hassle and do it all myself, I can pay $2.50 plus a reasonable fee per worthwhile mail piece, and have it all done for me?! Sign me up!
Of course, reading the comments posted here which have suggested that this company might be less than legitimate, I will have to check you guys out a little more. It sounds like these claims are hogwash, but none the less I’ll try e-mailing and calling your customer service just to confirm they are reasonable about following up with such inquiries. Since that seems to be the basis of the complaints here, I’ll be satisifed in hearing otherwise without too much in depth investigation.
-Jeff
I signed up for this service and wasn’t thrilled. The Remote Control Mail user interface is terribly complex and slow, and I waited three days for the contents of an envelope to be scanned after I requested it. Their service is geared more toward people who want their mail archived (which I definitely DON’T want) and toward people who want to share their postal mail amongst each other (which doesn’t help me.)
I quit RCM and signed up with an outfit in New York City called cityvoffice.com. They give you a midtown Manhattan street address that doesn’t carry the stigma of the “RCM #” (a dead giveaway that it’s a mail receiving service.) They also scan the outside of each envelope and will scan the contents on request, but their response time is much faster and their user interface is as easy as using e-mail.
~JAA
NOTE TO TECHCRUNCH EDITORS: Our experience with blogs is that many blog owners do not appreciate two categories of comments (in addition to hate speech): spam intended for search engines or postings by competitors pretending to be someone else. Commentat emptor. Given the editors’ recent stand on “pay-to-shill” services that detract from the integrity of blog postings, we understand that you may want to delete the fraudulent comment of “Jorge Ano,” and if so you will necessarily delete our response, which follows:
The above post by “Jorge Ano” does not reflect an actual user experience with Remote Control Mail because the above-named user has never held a Remote Control Mail account. Assuming “Jorge Ano” is, therefore, the pseudonym of a representative of the service promoted in the falsified post above, we’d like to make a few things clear.
First, Remote Control Mail scanning services take one business day from the time of request. Unlike the promoted service, which, being a new and untested service is wise to make no guarantees, we make our turnaround time explicit on our website. See http://www.remo...com/pricing.php. If “Jorge Ano” had been an actual customer of Remote Control Mail, he would not have experienced a three-day turnaround unless he had submitted his request on a Friday afternoon. (Future operational staffing plans will include Saturday and Sunday shifts as well; customer service is already 7 days a week). Both our policy and our records (which we checked) confirm that there has never been any other kind of three-day turnaround at Document Command, and that includes all of our actual customers who are not named “Jorge Ano”.
Second, the claim that our service is geared “toward people who want their mail archived” or “who want to share their postal mail amongst each other” is an intriguing attempt to make negatives out of features we offer that the promoted competitor does not, but we won’t take up space explaining in detail that no such emphases exist on our site, in our pricing or messaging, or in our user interface. The reality is that we alone have designed our user experience to allow users, while online, to do everything (and more) that they could do with their postal mail offline. Mr. “Ano”’s attempt at competitive differentiation is clever, but insufficiently subtle.
Third, contrary to Mr. “Ano”’s implication, we do have street addresses, which come sans “stigma”. But there is also no difference between an RCM# (which may be rendered simply as “#”) and the suite numbers (also “#”) that must be used in “Jorge Ano”’s service (see the promoted site’s FAQs). Moreover, use of a suite #, not to mention use of a tiny suite in Manhattan, presents major scaling issues that, among other things, will make rapid turnaround times, caching of mail while awaiting customer instructions, and prevention of mail loss a growing challenge (as an example, we have tried to reach cityvoffice for a week and a half and reached only voice mail). Also notable is that the promoted service is extremely expensive.
We can report that Mr. “Ano” does make one correct statement about the site he promotes: its operator will “also scan the outside of each envelope”, and he will apparently present the resulting image online to his users. This correct statement, among other things, is being brought to the attention of the site operator and his licensor by our patent attorneys. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the promoted service is just the latest, very sincere, unscalable validation of a technology that we invented, developed, and protected over two years ago.
Our service is just out of beta and our company is still a young company. Our promises to customers already convey a sense of humility about our humble beginnings; fraudulent statements about our service, in potential violation of state and federal laws against unfair competition, do no one any good.
Cameron Powell
VP, Business Development
Document Command
As many of the other contributors I think this is a great product idea while having concerns about the implementation or the operation being a scam. (product seems to be too good to be true, especially considering the pricing which is lower than an us postal service po box)
even if you google a lot you will not find much about document command, inc or remote mail control other than their own press releases and this forum…
DAN BIKLE (August post): Have you started your field test and can provide some of your findings????
I am thinking of having a try myself, however it seems to be an investment of at least $50 ($25 setup + $25 minimum account charge) + the risk of hassles with credit card fraud….
I am a person spending much time out of the country and signed up with RCM about two months ago and I have run a couple of test mail sends. All works as advertized by RCM, so I am now starting to have my real mail diverted to them. Most of my mail will be mail already gathered unopened once a week into a mailing envelope which will go to RCM. If one puts “OPEN AND INDUCT” then one’s name and box number on the mailing envelope, RCM will open the main envelope and then “induct” the contents (scan the faces of the envelopes inside along with part of the first page of any loose papers). One can then choose to open and scan any of the mail that was inside the mailing envelope. The test send I sent this way worked well.
@ Cameron Powell: You said:
“We can report that Mr. “Ano” does make one correct statement about the site he promotes: its operator will “also scan the outside of each envelope”, and he will apparently present the resulting image online to his users. This correct statement, among other things, is being brought to the attention of the site operator and his licensor by our patent attorneys. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the promoted service is just the latest, very sincere, unscalable validation of a technology that we invented, developed, and protected over two years ago.”
Whatever, dude! MAJOR prior art from PaperlessPOBox.com – good luck with your silly patent lawsuits when these guys have been in this business since the last freaking millenium!!
In regards to integrity, level of technical integration and overall business acumen:
1) I’ve known Ron Wiener since the early 90’s. As another serial entrepreneur, the guy is one of the very few who I would bet on. He’s also gracious with his time and commitment to other entrepreneurs and strategic partners. He’s had his business missteps, but is fair and wiling to make right.
2) Mike Miles worked for one of my companies in the mid 90’s, and was one of the finest “found engineers” I have ever had the opportunity to know. His work in our laser display business changed the industry (for the better) and challenged more seasoned engineers with his ability to make systems come together that actually performed.
3) IP issues, production process issues, speed and cost… I believe Ron and associates will figure it out. They (almost) always do.
I don’t care what business or business model you address, there is likely prior art, competition, maybe even some dead bodies (expired or bankrupt companies) within the landscape.
Timing, passionate drive, resources and strategic alignment are some of the real keys that make for a successful business. Time and time again we see great ideas flounder because the world was just not ready (Pointcast.com anyone? How about the Apple Newton…;-)
VC’s bank on great people with good ideas. They know that’s a winning formula. Killer ideas, even timed right, can go to pot with the wrong people behind the wheel.
I give Ron, Mike and friends a good chance. If this model doesn’t take off (and I’m a PayTrust user as well, so I’ve been into this sort of technology since 2001), smart guys will figure out where this technology will work as a business.
Maybe USPS licenses or buys the process from them… or partners. Who knows?
And for you naysayers: go do something important. Found a company. Bootstrap it, mortgage yourself to the hilt and take the dive. Do whatever it takes to break through some paradigms, cross a few chasms and make a difference.
Ron’s done that more than once.
Best of success, guys,
Mark Alan Effinger
http://www.RichContent.com
Remote Control Mail (DocumentCommand) functions essentially as described. However, due to self-admitted shortcomings in the software, it is possible and likely to accumulate large sums in an individual ‘draw down’ account. That is what has happened to me. Effectively, I am acting as one RCM’s bankers – interest free loans! Not bad for RCM.
I was unhappy with the situation but willing to put up with as I like all other features of the service and the system was improving. In addition, their customer service was genuinely helpful.
Now that has changed. Document Command has instituted a forced plan change effective January 1st. This plan requires a monthly fixed fee, a complete reversal of the original model that agreement that most customers signed up for.
In an extremely unfortunate move, RCM does not provide an option to opt out. Instead, if you decide to cancel your account they will keep the money in your draw down account and continuing forwarding mail until the account goes to zero. That is bad business in any case, amounts to a bait and switch tactic and aggravated by the fact that the draw down accounts are inflated due to problems with the RCM system.
I have personally requested on two separate occasions a response to my concerns from RCM. I have recieved nothing. Today, they hold $184 of my money. Though I am now diverting my mail elsewhere and do not use any of their services they have previously refused to refund my money and have not answered my recent requests.
The bottom line for me is that I am now burdened with trying to get a company to return money to which they had no right in the first place. I will take this up with the appropriate States Attorney General and urge others in my situation to do the same.
I apologize for needing to make a second comment on this subject, but I can not let a comment like “bait and switch” stand.
I signed up with RCM back in September. I fully understood at the time that this was a venture project with lots of uncertainties but being an expat it seemed like just what I needed. I am not disappointed that they have changed from a “per piece per event” charge to a three-level monthly fee depending on the service requested. If this is what it takes to make this venture profitable and continuing, I am OK with it.
As for holding funds, it was clearly stated that once we had the stored mail sent to us, the remainder of the funds would be refunded. It would seem to me that all Michael needs to do is to have his mail account closed out, the held mail either discarded or sent to him, and the remainder of the funds refunded. This is what RCM stated up front before I signed up with them. I don’t consider the changes they made as “bait and switch”. It is, after all, a venture project with risks, meaning there will of course be changes along the way.
So far I am pleased with the service. Hope it continues is all.
Please allow me to address the comments of Michael Dumont, and, more briefly, Sam Yamashita.
Mr. Dumont complains of a “bait and switch”, among other grievances that he had – for a few brief hours – on December 7. That is, while he complains in his posting here, and on a blog of his own that’s dedicated to his complaint, that he “received nothing” in response to his communications to Document Command, that is because (1) he posted his complaints only a day or so after his email to Document Command, (2) the phone number listed in his account was incorrect, so that we were unable to reach him after repeated tries, and (3) he had not slowed down to actually read the user agreement he’d agreed to.
But reach him we finally did, and he got his refund shortly thereafter. Case closed.
However, it may help other readers to know a bit of background and actual facts.
1. A draw-down account is standard procedure in the mailing business, among many others (many cell phone companies also charge monthly in advance, contrary to popular belief). The Pitney Bowes mailing meters that run mail in most large companies in the U.S. operate solely on draw-down accounts.
2. Mr. Dumont complains that we changed our pricing. Why this was grounds for a public complaint is unclear, because Mr. Dumont expressly agreed that we could change our agreement, prospectively, by freely agreeing to our user agreement. It’s in section 2, for those with a great deal of free time. http://www.remo...mail.com/ua.php.
This should also put to rest the complaint of a “forced plan change.” If you sign up for month-to-month pricing, then your original pricing is by definition only valid for a month. If Mr. Dumont had signed up for a year, then his pricing would remain the same for a year. This is how pricing works, in any business: it can be changed unless there is an agreement that it will not change. We do not “force” anyone to pay the new pricing. They are free to stop using our service. Thus the statement that we do “not provide an option to opt out” is clearly not true.
3. Mr. Dumont complains that we did not immediately grant his refund and even professes to believe that we would simply hold on to it, willy-nilly, as long as we liked. Aside from having given us very little time between his request and his premature blog postings, Mr. Dumont once again complained before reading his user agreement. First, the agreement makes clear that a user must *close his account* before a refund can be issued. If he has not, and there is mail remaining in it, then we need to have funds on hand to process any services requested with respect to that mail. Mr. Dumont had not closed his account as of the time of his complaint or for days thereafter. (In fact, his refund was issued at almost the same time he finally did close his account). Our customer Morris, who is apparently a shameless agreement-reader, made this clear in his post above:
“. . . it was clearly stated that once we had the stored mail sent to us, the remainder of the funds would be refunded. It would seem to me that all [Mr. Dumont] needs to do is to have his mail account closed out, the held mail either discarded or sent to him, and the remainder of the funds refunded. This is what RCM stated up front before I signed up with them.”
Second, the agreement makes clear that even after account closure, a refund may take up to 45 days – not “immediately,” as Mr. Dumont demanded in his email to us. The policy spelled out in Mr. Dumont’s agreement is clear:
“DCI will refund any remaining Available . . . to the account’s designated payment method within 45 days . . .”
Mr. Dumont agreed to this, too. Why do we allow ourselves up to 45 days? Because if more mail comes into the account and all funds have been depleted, we will have no way to forward the mail to the former account holder or to process scans or shreds of it. And because if the funds were generated through a fraudulent credit card, researching and resolving the matter takes time. Accordingly, this 45-day upper limit has valid reasons behind it, was agreed to by Mr. Dumont, and yet was never exercised in his case in any event.
4. Nor did we ever refuse to refund Mr. Dumont’s money. He refers to two contacts to Document Command. One was on about December 6, and is addressed above. In the first, in September, we explained that while we’d be happy to refund money that had been charged for some shipment estimates, it might make sense for him to keep that money in his account pending the next shipment, rather than incur a new charge shortly thereafter. He agreed, and he kept using his account without complaint for several months. The complaint was only revived when Mr. Dumont did not get satisfaction on his unreasonable request for an “immediate” refund.
Mr. Dumont is entitled to an opinion, no matter how unreasonable or resistant it is to assuming responsibility for his agreements. What is unfortunate is his willingness to make uninformed accusations that lack any basis and are even demonstrably false. It’s unfortunate enough that he did not read his user agreement before posting his grievances on TechCrunch and even creating his own “blog”, but Mr. Dumont also did not remove the false statements on his blog even after he solicited feedback on them, they were brought to his attention, and he had nothing more to dispute on the matter.
Insofar as he twice conceded in his blog that he had only great experiences with our customer support team (“well executed and actually had good customer support,” “their customer service was genuinely helpful”), one might have hoped he could give our company the benefit of the doubt, rather than react prematurely to erroneously accuse the company of various imagined offenses.
Mr. Yamashita (see the “Whatever, dude” post above) claims “MAJOR prior art from PaperlessPOBox.com” during “the last freaking millenium [sic].” Mr. Yamashita does not indicate which aspect of our patent applications, exactly, has major prior art at Paperlesspobox, so I will assume he is not familiar with our applications and which features in particular we believe are novel. This is no forum to get into the details, but if upon actually reading our applications he wishes to provide us with major or minor prior art that our attorneys have to date not found, we would welcome his input.
Thanks to all who have taken time to post their thoughtful observations on our new service.
“MAJOR prior art from PaperlessPOBox.com” during “the last freaking millenium [sic].” Mr. Yamashita does not indicate which aspect of our patent applications, exactly, has major prior art at Paperlesspobox, so I will assume he is not familiar with our applications and which features in particular we believe are novel. This is no forum to get into the details, but if upon actually reading our applications he wishes to provide us with major or minor prior art that our attorneys have to date not found, we would welcome his input.
I work in litigation. It’s why I need a physical mailing address. So, I am all for the legal system, but I (for one) don’t need my mail service to be out there threatening hair-brained lawsuits in an attempt to stifle competition.
The idea of patenting this service is simply absurd. Convincing me to use your service because of price points and features is great. Telling me that you are the only entity that has those features because you will sue anyone else who tries to use them? Not great.
No litigation is without risk and all of it comes at great expense. These facts make your attitude regarding calling the patent lawyers dangerous to your continued survival. You loss in such a matter could render you unable to remain financially viable. Then what happens to my address?
I had seriously considered switching from paperlesspobox before reading these posts. You may want to consider revising your statements to just point out that you have a better thing going than does the random poster.
You may also want to consider that challenging someone else on the internet to basically hash it out with your lawyers (”Yamashita does not indicate which aspect of our patent applications, exactly, has major prior art at Paperlesspobox, so I will assume he is not familiar with our applications and which features in particular we believe are novel”) is just plain silly. It is just as ridiculous as me asking you to tell me what aspects of your service your attorneys think are novel, so that I can begin to unravel a non-existent case.
It is apparent that you feel the need to defend your service based upon grounds besides stating that you are just plain kick-ass and your customers agree. That’s a tactic that may give people other than just me pause.
Good luck in your endeavors.
People,
I’ve been using the service now since the summer of 2006.
It’s working well for me.
It’s nice to be able to trash junk-mail with the click of a mouse.
Also it is handy to have automatic scans of important mail
like mortgage statements.
Beware though. remotecontrolmail is very expensive if you
ask them to physically forward mail to your house.
The web interface is fast and intuitive.
Also it is not dragged down by some of the newer
web 2.0 Ajax type gizmos which are getting propagated
by bored web designers.
I recommend remotecontrolmail.com
-Dan
Nica idea, but simply seems to be a remake of services like http://www.paper2mail.de over there in europe – nevertheless I´d give them a chance
I can only imagine how much more free time I would have in my day if I could answer not only emails but all mail from my iphone, whether I would be on a subway, walking around, or in a boring meeting. Its a big leap in bringing the outside world closer to you. Who wouldn’t prefer simplifiying the mail process to make the iphone a one-stop shop for your mailing needs. I’m surprised no one has come up with the idea sooner.
From the sounds of the product, I can see where people have their concerns. Remote Control Mail may seem complex to some, but also very convenient to those constantly on the move. I do not believe remote control mail will evolutionize the way we receive mail, but it will have a positive impact on the busy business world. Good Luck.
Good Luck.