The decision was actually more out of necessity. We started the company as a bootstrapped operation running out of my apartment. Originally, we had all the checks from customers being sent to that location. Eventually my sister, who is based in another state, started handling the check deposits but we didn’t want to give out customers an address that might eventually change…. thus we started giving them the Earth Class Mail address. This has been a good decision as we’ve changed offices several times since then, and haven’t had to worry about customers sending checks to an address that is no longer valid. Also, Earth Class Mail now will deposit checks for us, so it saves us a ton of time.

To answer your question, I’d say it was definitely a strategic choice that turned out to save us a ton of effort.

-chris

Here’s how ECM swindles people: you sign up for a contract term. The term begins the instant you sign up – not when the account is usable. The account is not usable until after you go get some forms notarized, and snail mail them to their Oregon office. They state right in the lengthy user agreement that they will in fact return to sender any mail they receive before the notarized forms are received. If you ask them to honor their 1 year contractual obligation from the date the account becomes usable, they refuse. If you tell them to honor the contract, or cancel it, they will terminate the account — AND THEY WILL KEEP THE SETUP FEE (claiming that it’s non-refundable per their “money-back guarantee”)

For a while now, Earth Class Mail has been promising that they’ll provide an automatic check processing service. We’re eagerly awaiting their implementation of this feature as we’d use it in a heartbeat.