Is That Legal?

get used to it. i open my boxes, force one glued up seam apart and turn the whole thing inside out. re-glue or tape the seam and take it to the p.o. not that big a deal...

They're just hurt that you've been unfaithful to them, is all. Try bringing flowers with you next time you try to mail in a FedEx box.

Possible liability under a common law 'passing off' theory? It's a stretch... Though, I imagine that worries over the infringement of service marks has something to do with it.

I thought of that, Brian ... but they accept all sorts of boxes with other service marks on them. I can mail whatever I want in a Victoria's Secret box. It's just DHL and FedEx that seems to get their hackles up.

The Postal Service is required, to some extent, to act like a business. It has, in many years, fully supported itself. Just like I doubt FedEx or DHL will ship something in an USPS Express Mail box, USPS won't ship something in a box from a compeating company.

I understand that they're a business, and I understand that they won't ship what I wanted them to ship. My question is why.

Let's take an analogy. If I went in to Burger King and ordered a dozen Whoppers, and had a McDonald's totebag over my shoulder, I wouldn't expect them to say, "we won't sell you a dozen hamburgers if you're going to put them in that McDonald's tote bag."

If I walked into a Ford dealership and said, "I'd like to buy that Taurus, and oh, by the way, I'm going to put a bumper sticker after I drive off the lot that says, "Chevrolet Rules! Ford Sucks!", I wouldn't expect the dealer to say, "I'm not selling you a Ford."

I understand that Ford and Burger King might say these things. But I think it'd just be pissy if they did, and a stupid business judgment.

No?

Preempting "Department of Homeland Lameness" jokes.

I suspect it has to do with the boxes being free. For example, the post office will give you boxes for free, but the boxes say "Priority Mail" or "Express Mail" on them, and if you want to use them to mail something, you have to pay for Priority Mail or Express Mail. FedEx and DHL will also give you free boxes that can only be used for their more expensive shipping options.

A free-riding consumer might get a free DHL express box, take it to the post office and use it to send something by cheap parcel post. This doesn't hurt the post office, but the opposite would: someone taking a free Priority Mail box and using it to send something by DHL. Perhaps DHL and the post office have an agreement not to let customers use the other's boxes.

Another possibility is that the USPS wants to make sure it gets credit when it provides good service. If they delivered your DHL box to your dad and it got there quickly, your dad would look at the big DHL logo and say "Wow, Eric said he just sent this on Friday and it's already here. DHL is great!".

I think that Brian's probably got the basic idea - it'll be to do with service marks of firms providing a service of similar value and content. The flip side of this concept is trademarks - in some cases it's permitted to have two firms named the same thing, as long as their commercial footprint doesn't overlap.

I find that turning the boxes inside out or concealing the FedEx/UPS/DHL trademark normally does the job, anyway.

The post office does not allow ANY boxes with logos or markings on them. You need mark them off with a marker, for example. I've tried to mail books in a old wine box, and they sent me packing until I bought a black marker. Why do they have such a blanket rule? I don't know. It is sort of silly. But it does not just apply to rival shipping companies.

Timothy is right. They won't let you use boxes with any kind of marking. I had to help a friend mail back a television, and we had to wrap the whole thing in brown paper.

Dan's theory that USPS wants credit for its great service is flawed in only one respect: the "great service" part. USPS should be stamping "DHL" and "FedEx" on its boxes until those guys sue to make USPS cut it out.

(Btw, Prof. Muller, I've just noticed that one can't really cut & paste from a comment. Or at least I can't. Josh Marshall's blog does the same thing---you try to select a sentence, & you end up selecting the whole blog. If this isn't intentional, it might merit a look.)

Notice UPS isn't in the list?

They do in fact deliver for UPS.

This isn't however like you carrying your whoppers in a BK bag though, unless you are delivering you own mail. It would be more like Pizza Hut being forced to deliver your pizza in a Dominoes box.

While we are on this subject, anybody know the price paid to ship junk mail vs a personal letter?

"While we are on this subject, anybody know the price paid to ship junk mail vs a personal letter?"

I fhte US postal service is anything like the Danish postal service (and it is), then there is no definitive answer to that question - it's a matter of how much the company sends. Bulk mailing is negotiated with each customer.

LoL, ya I had that problem too with some boxes that had markings on them when trying to post something. LoL, do what I did... LoL.. I simply undid the box, and turned it inside out, and then resealed it. I figured, I was going to use tape anyways.. It worked for me...LoL...

United States Postal Service
We Deliver For You!
(when and if we feel like it)
BTW Mind if we read your Playboy?

Way back in high school, I worked for Burger King, and they said if a customer brought in a bag from elsewhere, we should politely ask to repackage it if they were eating inside (with a friend, forex). Sounds stupid, since the food will be pretty obvious anyway.

If you use a USPS Priority box for some other purpose, it's technically a federal crime. If you turn it inside out and retape and the inspectors latch on, expect a nasty letter at least.

I would imagine not using other company's boxes is a name recognition thing. I do know UPS and FedEx will take each others' boxes without hassle, and if stuff was dropped in the wrong pickup (Red Label into a FedEx drop, for example), they'll swap off at the end of the evening, just as a customer courtesy for stupid people.

It gets weirder. I recently went to mail some CDs to a guy who bought them from me on Ebay. I always re-use packing material as I'm doing a fair amount of Ebay selling these days and I abhor the wastefulness of paper/cardboard consumption, so I have piles of boxes, bags, etc at home and re-use them regularly. The right size box was a small Priority box that some other Ebayer had shipped to me when I bought something. Didn't have any other boxes of the right size. So I turned it inside out, taped it up and packed/labelled it.

Note that it was taped all over with brown strapping tape, labelled with a hand written label, and going out Media Mail with 4 CDs in it. Just an anonymous hand-packed parcel from a private customer.

At the counter the Post Office clerk asked me suspiciously, "Is that one of our Priority boxes?" and innocently enough I said "Yup, someone sent it to me and I turned it inside out and am recycling it." Much to my surprise she then said, "I can't accept that. You aren't allowed to use Priority boxes for anything but Priority mail."

My jaw dropped. The original Post Office customer had paid for the box and sent me something Priority, so the box was now a USED box -- which I explained -- but the PO still wanted to control what uses could and could not be made of the box. "You can recycle it," said the clerk, "or you can use it for priority mail." I said with some surprise, "But it's about the same size and shape as any number of boxes -- an Amazon box, a Powells box, any CD or book mailer. It's a used box, what difference does it make where it came from?" She shook her head and insisted "We know our own boxes." Our own boxes, you note -- not the property of the customer but the property, in perpetuity it seems, of the Post Office.

I wanted to protest that it's my bloody used box. I could bury it in my compost heap, light it on fire, use it to paint a picture on, cut it into paper dollies, insulate my boots with it, or any other damn thing I please -- it's now scrap cardboard! However it is a waste of time and breath arguing with a jobsworth at a postal counter, so... she would not accept the shipment except as a Priority shipment at twice or three times the fee, and I had to take it home and repackage it. Growling all the way.

This raises all kinds of interesting questions, and I think the policy might actually be in violation of some trade/commerce law or other. In the meantime there is certainly the issue of Priority vs Fixed Rate boxes -- the flat ones are exactly the same size. Is the PO now going to insist that you cannot reuse a Fixed Rate box, pay extra, and ship the contents Priority (crossing out the red Fixed Rate medallion)?

When I asked what the hell the rationale was behind this crazy insistence that a priority box was a priority box in perpetuity, she said that people take the free priority boxes (i.e. steal them) and use them for other purposes, whereas the cost of the box is part of the Priority Mail fee (the box is a freebie that you get as a bonus for using Priority Mail). And that the PO can't afford to have people stealing the boxes and using them as generic free cardboard boxes. It seems to me that the fundamental problem is the PO giving away free packaging, thus encouraging people to be wasteful *and* painting themselves into this ridiculous corner of asserting perpetual ownership of the cardboard (at least in its original form factor).

There seems to be a general trend for merchants to assert more and more authority over what the customer does with products after purchase, as if all material goods were actually "leased" from the vendor instead of bought outright. How long before it becomes an "offence" to -- for example -- dye a shirt a different colour from what the fashion designer intended, or in any way to repurpose or re-use any product, to put goods from one manufacturer into a container with another mfrs label on it, etc? Brand assertion is rapidly becoming the kapu system of our time, with the software and entertainment barons leading the way. I hear there have even been plans mooted to implant RFIDS in clothing which would interact with scanner-equipped laundry machines which would refuse to launder the clothing "incorrectly."

The problem is that the majority of shippers who use those boxes aren't recycled. They just grab a bunch of free Priority boxes and use them as free shipping boxes. The balance of probability would be you doing the same.

You should have just said NO :)

I asked on another list about USPS regulations
if the post office will accpect a fedex box
the answer is yes if there are stamps on they
will take it..