Spammers are not going to pay for sending mail. A typical spammer sends out perhaps a million mail messages a day hoping to get maybe a hundred or so suckers (er hits).

A million messages at a penny each is $10.000.00 a DAY for postage. Kind of cuts into the old profit margin a bit.

But legitimate emailers (for example credit card companies) have been able to cut their costs a LOT by not having to pay for traditional postage.

I get hardly any hard mail delivered to the house any more. All my utilities, all my credit cards, my mortgage, almost everything is handled electronically. Most of them are on automatic deduction; I get an e-bill for my two electric services, they tell me when they are going to zap my checking account. Bob's my brother, out the money goes.

Similarly, my MasterCard account statement comes via email and I go online and schedule a debit from my checking account.

These companies have been getting this service pretty much free, and they save themselves 30 odd cents a month for every account holder that does this. And on top of that they don't have printing costs, mail stuffing costs, check handling costs. It's a real win-win situation.

So now they have may have to pay a penny to send their notices to me. They can gripe about it if they want, but they are still saving a real bundle.

And, in the long run if they save a bundle one or two of them may pass a small part of the savings on to me. Perhaps that will happen on the day Hell freezes over.

TEd