Why Tim Ferriss was oh so wrong about (at least) this one thing.

Around the time we began disbursing all of our worldly possessions to embark on our work – travel adventures, Andy had already been an avid follower of Timothy Ferriss for quite some time.  Now if you don’t know who Tim Ferriss is, like I didn’t, I will share with you that he is a guru of just about all things.  If there is anything at all you want to know about, anything at all, just ask Tim.  He probably has an answer for you.  And if I sound a little snarky well, then you’re feelin’ me.

Sometimes when you make decisions in life, you do not have 100% knowledge of how that decision might impact you, particularly in the minutiae.  So when it came time to figure out how we were going to handle regular mail as we travel the Americas it came as no surprise that Tim had the answer.  The answer?  *We can uses services provided by Earth Class Mail (ECM).  This appeared to be the perfect answer. We would set up a mailing address which would even continue to be in San Antonio and have our mail forwarded there.  Earth Class Mail was the service that would receive the mail pieces, scan them automatically or by request (our preference), and then recycle or forward pieces by request.  All of our mail would be managed on line.  Even further, we could receive checks at our address at ECM and the service would deposit them to the bank of our choice.  Brilliant!

We have been using this service for about a year and a half.  Sorry Tim, things really did break bad.  This service has been such a bad experience and I am working every day to get out from underneath this obligation.  Earth Class Mail and taken front and center as my daily struggle, thorn in my side, and challenge for trying to get even the simplest things done with them.  They advertise “We digitize your mail so you can get to work”.  When in actuality, I spend some of my work week, every week, managing what they have done or didn’t do correctly, whichever the case may be.  Here are some of my issues with ECM.

1.        Crazy number system – My troubles began immediately with the first email from Earth Class Mail.  Although I was told that I would have a San Antonio address with a suite number, my new address arrived at Suite #104  ECM #610804.  So now I have 10 digit extension to my address with a firm warning that if a sender did not use the ECM number, my mail would be returned.  And they did. The extensive numbering system provided several challenges from this point forward.

2.       Always updating, never working – Almost every time I log into ECM it looks different.  I know those engineers and developers are working back there to provide more bells and whistles than ever.  But it doesn’t do me a bit of good if the bells don’t toll and the whistles don’t blow.  Buttons and options appear and disappear regularly and many times just don’t work.  Who is in charge of quality back there?

3.       Slow to nonexistent customer service - The last ticket I opened for customer service was on Feb. 1^st.  As of this writing, Feb. 13^th, I have had no response.  I sent a follow-up email this morning, again to my point of having to provide for my time to work out issues with this service provided by ECM.

4.       It’s very, very expensive – The service seemed reasonably priced for the promises made at signup.  And I thought it would be money well spent for the great customer service promised.  But after using it for all of this time, I can promise you that it feels like I am paying 10 times what the service is worth.  Over the term of my service I have worked about a dozen tickets with outstanding issues and some of them have taken weeks to resolve much like the one I am working on today.  And please don’t try to find a phone number to contact anyone.  I’ve also tried reaching management through LinkedIn and Twitter.  Believe me, they don’t want to hear from you.

5.       The process is terrible – Here’s something they don’t tell you.  When I receive a check in San Antonio it’s not scanned and deposited at my location, even though my bank, USAA, is in San Antonio.  This is the reason I chose a San Antonio address for my deliveries.  Nope, the check is received in San Antonio, shipped to the west coast where it’s scanned, prepared, for deposit, and shipped back to San Antonio.  Not realizing this extended process I paid a $30 extra fee each time I wanted to “expedite” a deposit which means I was paying to ship it BACK to San Antonio.  After several emails of digging to find out why deposits took so long, a help desk finally disclosed the process.  Incredible.

6.       The money grabs- The above is a sample money grab by ECM.  There have been others.  Back in December when one of their bells and whistles (namely the RECYCLE button) didn’t work, a whole lot of junk mail (it was Christmas after all) got moved into a “storage file” which I never once used and didn’t check.  Further, the storage folder provided no indication that there was anything in there so I never really looked.  But there all of that junk mail sat until Feb. 1^st when I received an $80 bill for storing all of that mail.  By the way, that’s the ticket I opened on Feb. 1^st.  Like I said, there have been others.

Should I go on? I literally could write ten more pages on the issues I have had with ECM detailing each ticket I opened for customer service, but I am done for today.  I just want to put this out there to save others from the hassle from which Tim Ferriss did not save me.  ECM offers pay for play which may have been the program that Tim Ferriss operates under, an affiliate program.  If so, he sure got a lot of our money.  If anyone is attempting the hard core sell on ECM, this may be your reason why.  But there is a happy ending for me.

A couple of months ago I started researching remote mail services.  Obviously it’s a move I should have made to start with all that time ago.  But I learn from my mistakes and I hope you do too.  With a lot of research I landed on a service that I liked for a new start.  I booted it up and have been running it simultaneously with ECM.  The new service, PhysicalAddress.Com has been a dream.  I have not experienced any of the headaches borne out of ECM service.  In fact, it offers and great piece of mind at a very reasonable price.  If you have remote mail needs, I recommend it and no, I’m not on an affiliate program.  But do your research.

*NOTE:  Earth Class Mail was specifically called out in the book Four Hour Work Week.  I hope that it’s updated at a future date.