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The Almighty Buck The Internet

Paperless Billing? 114

Posted by Cliff from the keeping-a-paper-trail dept.
Bruha writes "Almost all of the bills I receive today have the option to go paperless. I already pay all utilities and creditcards online but have yet to tell them to stop sending me a physical bill even though they heavily advertise the advantages of it. My concern are mistakes they could audit out and claim were not there. Has anyone experienced any problems with paperless billing or are my worries without merit?"
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Paperless Billing? More

Paperless Billing?

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  • I have been going the paperless billing route for like 2 years now, and have never had a problem. Except when my ISP (also my phone company) decided to start sending me paper bills instead of emails. I haven't been able to get them to switch back yet.

    First Post.

    • I have been going the paperless billing route for like 2 years now, and have never had a problem.

      And there my friend, is the very issue
      When it works (as it has with you for two years) everything is fine. Its only when things go wrong you realise having a paper trail is a very good idea.

      FWIW I've had a problem with BT (British Telecom) internet billing a while back (yes I know, stay with me). Being able to whip out paper copies of all me dealings with them definately helpd resolve the problems I had.

      I'

    • Danger Will Robinson! In YOUR case (anecdotal evidence, of course) YOU have had no problem. However, there ARE problems that people really HAVE encountered, many of which took a long time and a lot of effort to correct. Remember, with money, you are guilty until proven innocent.

      Note this: many online billing systems and automatic payment systems, allow the companies you have registered with, to add to or take away money at will.

      Not having a paper trail may be very bad, if there is identity theft, some
    • You cannot realisticly project your good 2 years of experience for your entire lifetime of let's say 50 years. You are saying that it worked for 4% of time time (and counting), well that is not an assurance I would feel secure by.

      Of course the companies advertise it heavily, since it would certainly reduce their costs of mailing, etc.

      I chose a half-way solution, where I get paper bills, and I pay them online. Works fine for me, and I get to keep the paper trail.
    • Jesus the christ, you guys can react to the most innocuous things with a level of rabidity that really doesn't do a lot to support your opinions.

      First, the original question seemed to be asking for personal experience, which Tim_F gave. I know it's hard to figure out, because he used difficult words like "I" and "my" and "me" to indicate personal experiences.

      Second, only through willfull misunderstanding could a person read Tim_F's post as a strict, unyielding defese of paperless billing. Nowhere his po

  • Answer is simple... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Use the paperless option only with companies you trust, ie the ones that have a premium customer service.

  • Problems happen no matter what... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by -=[Dr. AJAX]=- ( 17537 ) * on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:41AM (#7732169) Homepage
    I think mistakes could be made either way. Personally, I'd be checking both against my own records rather than errors between the two version of the statements.
    • I've been using a leading online banking portal in Malaysia to pay my bills and do other stuffs like 3rd party transfers.

      One of the problems is that it does not show the running totals with the online statements - only the credits and debits and the most recent balance. I had a friend who had RM1000 (~USD263) 'disappear' undetected for some time from his online transfer - it was not until he updated his bankbook (that gives a running total) that he noticed something amiss. Apparently, after contacting the

    • Re:Problems happen no matter what... (Score:4, Funny)

      by sporktoast ( 246027 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:28PM (#7735586) Homepage

      I think mistakes could be made either way. Personally, I'd be checking both against my own records rather than errors between the two version of the statements.
      Aw, cmon! If paperless is good enough for something important, like voting [blackbox.org], then it should certainly do for something as insignificant as your personal finances.

  • I won't give them the satisfaction. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by digitalvengeance ( 722523 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:44AM (#7732189)
    My credit card provider has been trying to get me to go with online billing for a while now, and to be honest, it would be easier for me - but I just won't give them the satisfaction.

    They save money when you choose to get your bill online only, and so they refuse to allow me to get my bill online and off, though that would be truly customer-centric. So, until they offer to give ME a portion of the savings from mailing every month, they'll just have to keep licking envelopes.

    Josh.

    • Re:I won't give them the satisfaction. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hawkstone ( 233083 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:55AM (#7732230)
      they refuse to allow me to get my bill online and off

      I do almost all of my bills online. Interestingly, my credit card company allows me to keep getting my bill in paper even though I pay the bill online. (It's not that interesting in that they're not the only ones doing this for me, but judging from this comment, I'm guessing it's not uncommon to disallow it.)

      Here's the problem, though. They keep "offering" to stop sending me my paper bill. First question: why would I want to stop receiving it? It's an automatic reminder that it's due, it leaves me a way to pay by check if I change online banking companies, and it's a nice double-check that they're not screwing me.

      Continuing on: when I choose to stop receiving my paper bills (by a simple mouse click online), they won't allow me to go back to receiving them. I might be able to do so if I sent them a letter or something, but still.... Zero incentive to stop receiving the paper versions.

    • I assume you're joking about the envelope-licking, but one incentive to go paperless is that it reduces their costs, which means they'll be capable of charging you less. These days, it's easy enough to roll any balance to a new card, so those with good credit can demand a lowered APR (case in point: about a year ago, I decided to cancel one of my cards, and told the sexy-voiced woman they transferred me to that another credit limit hike wouldn't make me change my mind, so they offered to permanently drop my

    • So, until they offer to give ME a portion of the savings from mailing every month, they'll just have to keep licking envelopes.

      I think the more likely scenario is that they'll start charging you for a paper bill and offer to let you do it online for free.
      • I think the more likely scenario is that they'll start charging you for a paper bill and offer to let you do it online for free.

        That would seem to be the case, except that most of the Real World doesn't know .pdf from PCP, and will throw a fit if someone tells them they'll get charged extra for paying bills the way they've always done. Once again, Neo-Luddism [york.ac.uk] is a Good Thing.

        In the other direction, I *did* get a $5 credit from Citibank for switching to paperless. It was no problem -- I'd been paying on
    • The savings aren't that great...here's why:
      The cost of sending an invoice includes the cost of paper, printing, processing, and postage.
      1. A little less than half the total cost is postage, per item.
        Your provider gets a discount on bulk mailing. When you choose to go electronic, the bulk discount gets upset and the remaining mailings cost more per item. It's not just the quantity in the mailing, but also the density. Cable companies usually get good density, whereas credit card companies probably don't.
      2. T
    • My credit card provider (AmEx) had this nifty "Pay online, no more stamps, no more paper bills!" offer, so I took t a chance and started paying my bill online and dumped my paper copy...

      I was a fool to think they would do a good job of it. First, they kept sending me paper bills, ok, fine... then stopped, oh good. Then started again. Great. Then stopped. Uh huh. Then they started coming again. All without me saying anything half the time, so I didn't know if not getting a bill for a month was a good

  • Paperless Billing (Score:5, Funny)

    by calcifer ( 649855 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:51AM (#7732216)
    I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut...I don't need a receipt for the doughnut - I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, Don't even act like I didn't buy a doughnut, I've got the documentation right here... Oh, wait, I left it at home. In the filing cabinet. Filed under D. For Doughnut. -Mitch Hedberg

    • You just wait.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @02:34AM (#7732424)
      Until you get hepatits from that doughnut you bought. Then you'll wish you had a receipt so as you can sue the doughnut maker's pants off...

    • The reason they give you the receipt for the doughnut, is theft prevention from the employees. If the employee has to give you the receipt it makes it harder for them to just pocket the $1 for the doughnut. Now perhaps if they paid the employees there enough to be trusted... I'd better stop before I get modded off topic.
      • And the reason you should take it as a taxpayer is that it prevents them from NOT reporting that as revenue. Thus, they will have to pay their legal share of taxes. Thereby indirectly preventing them stealing from you and me (if we were both in the same country...).
        Maybe I frequent too many mom and pop stores that can and will do this kind of thing...
      • I worked at Dunkin Donuts for a while in High School, and the .95 cent small coffee was my favorite to pocket. People would just toss a dollar at me and run away. Where do you think that dollar went? Ahh, the good old days of low morale jobs...wait.. :(

    • What if you said "Hey, I paid for 3 donuts, but you only gave me one!"? By looking at the receipt, they can demonstrate that you in fact only paid for one. Of course, it can't help prove that you only got one donut if you paid for three.

      I think receipts are also handed out so that the donut purchase can be expensed, if you're a business traveler. They would be in the minority, though, so I don't understand why the donut shop makes this the default...

      And why are you eating three donuts anyways? What ar
    • If you are on a business trip and decided to stop in and have a doughnut for breakfast, the receipt would be useful to get reimbursed.
    • To some skeptical friend, Don't even act like I didn't buy a doughnut, I've got the documentation right here...
      I paid for a doughnut but you didn't provide me with the said doughnut here is my receipt! V/Ruul

  • No Concern About Your Problem (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The only constraint is the amount of time you are willing to spend to correct the problem. It would take you weeks to just bring it to their attention. Not to mention to produce the paper trail and get resolution. The real problem with all the consolidation is the marginalization of the individual consumer. Nobody gives a flying-F these days. The are certainly not concerned about one customers experience.

  • Digitally Signed Bills (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Knetzar ( 698216 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:56AM (#7732233)
    I just with companies would send out digitally signed paperless bills. That way one could keep them on CD and use them to show that a mistake was made (if one was made). Until that happens I will continue to keep paper bills.

    Although now that I think about it, I audit stuff as soon as the bill gets sent to me (ok, so in my world that's a few weeks), if there is a problem I call and fix it right away. Whats the difference between paper and email when I call to say that my bill is wrong? For everything (except for maybe banks) you should have proof in another account, such as to prove you paid your credit card bill, just check your bank statement.
    Ok, now I'm confused about what I should do.
  • I file and archive all my paper bills in folders in the filing cabinet for a year or two [for credit card and bank statements(ok, not a bill)].
    So I wouldn't be going to completely paperless billing anytime soon unless I get an option of downloading bills in a format like watermarked PDF softcopy or something like that....

    • I used to do the same thing (actually, to be honest, I used to keep statements going back for seven years). Now, I've cut it down to just one year for my checking account, and don't bother keeping anything else. I'm a fanatic about tracking all my expenditures and payments in GnuCash, so if there's an error, I catch it the same month in which it occurs.

      But, I can see how that approach might not work for everyone.

  • ...getting used to not receving a paper bill and remembering to look at the emails and not consider them spam. That was my problem initially. Now I'm fine with the process, find it to be a more immediate response. Instead of spending time signing the check, filling the blanks in the form, stuffing the envelope and ensuring all my details are where they should be, licking the stamp, and going to the post office, or out to my mailbox to wait a few days for the check to clear, I just type some fields, enter s

  • Statement Life (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @02:03AM (#7732269)
    My biggest problem with online statements is that they are only kept online for six months. Between doing taxes and reconciling business expenses, that isn't nearly long enough! It doesn't seem logical for that sort of limit.

    Anybody know a credit card company that keeps records for at least 18 months? Citibank is killing me!
    • why not just copy the data locally? merge the data into a program like quicken or something.

    • lazy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jptechnical ( 644454 )
      Ever heard of PDF995 [pdf995.com]? At the least you could pdf your statements. There are a number of ways of storing your statements. If you cant get your statements from 6 months ago because you didnt save them it's your fault, not theirs.

      I am lenient in consideration of your low slashdot number ;-)

    • Citibank is a massive conglomerate, and so doesn't necessarily do things consistently across the board, but the company holding my MasterCard got bought out by them a couple years ago, and I'm able to get old statements mailed to me free of charge. I asked them for the absolute oldest statements, because I had poor record-keeping habits when I first got the card, but they purge their records after seven years.

  • Paperless != No Statement (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thecampbeln ( 457432 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @02:05AM (#7732277) Homepage
    I get a PDF statement emailed to me from my Aussi telephone company and save $5/month to boot. Best of all, just have to file the PDF into a network folder and I've got a "hard copy" to refer to.
    • Let's just hope that you don't have a HD problem at the same time you have a billing dispute. Unless you are scrupulous about doing backups, that HD failure could cost you a lot more than just the price of a replacement.
      • Besides a fairly decent backup schedule (in this case, even once a month would just about suffice), I've got the original email, so two copies + the backup location(s). Plus... any problems that arise with the billing SHOULD be rectified before you get the next statement anyway, so the "hard copies" are really for historical purposes only. All billing issues are fixed within a week of getting the PDF. Plus, no need to keep track of the dead-tree version.

  • Paranoia is good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jtheory ( 626492 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @02:12AM (#7732310) Homepage Journal
    I've paranoid about my bills, too (and I save my paper bills, in a stack, for years and years, after paying them online and marking them with the date, amount paid, and payment id). It's useful now and again, like when I look at my phone bill and wonder if it's always been that high.

    And once I got a credit card company to reduce my APR again when I had an extremely valid complaint that the notification sucked (there was no text in any actual bill mentioning the change).

    But I've never dealt with an error. Once my bank screwed something up, but they noticed it themselves and fixed it before I even complained.

    The thing is, I can't quite move to the paperless bills just because they seem so easy to abuse. Even if I save a copy of the email or webpage, an HTML file is child's play to alter, even for a layman; forging or altering a paper bill is tougher.

    I think what we need is electronic bills, with a way to archive a verifiable copy locally. I.e., if it's signed by the company's private key, etc. etc., you can prove you didn't tinker with it.

    We also need a format for bills such that they can be plugged into the standard money management programs directly.

    Is anyone doing this? It would be nice to get rid of those stacks of old bills.
  • I've got a credit card (Citibank) and when I went paperless I asked that they email me each month to remind me to pay it. Worked wonderfully for a year or two, and I saved a few dollars on stamps and checks. Then one month they never sent the email, and I didn't pay. They charged a late fee. Fortunately, I log *all* my incoming email, and I could prove they never sent the reminder. They decided to waive the fee THIS time, but if there is a next time I'm responsible. Yeah right. There hasn't been a "next time" yet, fortunately.
    • CRON, or some other scheduling software, is your friend - set up a cron job to remind you to check your bill at T-2 days or so.

      If you haven't received a mailing from them, you can check online and pay.
    • I agree...Don't rely on the e-mail as a reminder. Just because you don't get the bill, doesn't mean that you don't have to pay. Any company will gladly re-send the bill if you didn't receive it as expected.

      Related to the original question, I work for a local cable co. and developed their e-mail bill notification software. Once the bill is sent we don't really care about keeping a copy ourselves. We record the transactions and are usually able to reproduce a bill that closely resembles the original. Si
    • Considering that they refuse to take responsibility for physical mail that doesn't reach you, I'm very surprised that they took responsibility for an e-mail not reaching you. Just because they don't tell you that you owe them money doesn't mean you don't have to pay them. In fact, one time my sister got several parking tickets while driving the old car that I gave to her. They never sent me a notice to pay, but several years later when I went to buy a house, they appeared on my credit report!

  • Paperless rocks. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ffsnjb ( 238634 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @02:49AM (#7732487) Homepage
    In the last five years I've been able to get down to writing out 2 checks a month (rent and my net connection - time warner sux and I can't pay it online.) Everything else (I have a ton of bills) gets paid online, and I don't get statements sent.

    I went through my filing cabinet last week and rid myself of all past credit card statements (so many cards in 5 years, all at lower and lower rates). When I was done, I had shredded an entire drawer full of garbage. The best part is that I can't fill it back up because I don't get paper sent to me. The only thing I kept were the account closed notices, but only until I order a new credit report to verify closed accounts.

    Save a tree, man. Get rid of the paper (and recycle your shredded stuff!)

    • This is pretty much my story, too. It took me a week's worth of spare time to shred all that stuff, but it felt pretty good to do it (especially those "convenience checks" my credit cards kept sending me). Anyone need a four-drawer filing cabinet?

    • In the United States, depending on the severity of the audit, they can require you to produce everything going back as far as they like. Luckily most of us will never be subjected to having to produce more than seven years of back data. But I would be very wary of disposing of paper records newer than seven years unless you had archived it electronically somwehere.
  • Any company offering encrypted emails as a paperless billing solution? That way I have a copy of everything and they can't change stuff without a trail. I've got a PGP public key around somewhere... ;)
    • I think you mean "digitally signed", rather than "encrypted".

      (Just being a nitpicker. Sorry.)
      • No, I mean encrypted. As in, they're private information and I don't want anyone along the way to be able to read them. Signed would be handy too.
        • OK. But I don't grok the connection in your original post between encrypting and "inability to change stuff without a trail". Encryption without signature is deniable -- you can't prove the statement is authentic, so it's useless as a trail. With a signed document, you have proof that the trail is authentic, they can't deny it.

          Original: Any company offering encrypted emails as a paperless billing solution? That way I have a copy of everything and they can't change stuff without a trail. I've got a PGP p
          • How about the connection between me having a copy of an email on my PC and "inability to change stuff without a trail" -- the problem with most of the paperless billing/accounting systems is that they're all based on you going and viewing a(n encrypted) web page (which is generated dynamically and out of your control), while I believe they should be about receiving an encrypted email.
            • "How about the connection between me having a copy of an email on my PC and 'inability to change stuff without a trail'..." Well, there is no connection there. As RockyMountain said, "Encryption without signature is deniable -- you can't prove the statement is authentic, so it's useless as a trail. With a signed document, you have proof that the trail is authentic, they can't deny it."

              So, let's say Company X sends you an encrypted bill like you want. OK, great, nobody was able to read it in transit bec
              • Jeez people, encrypt it AND sign it. I'm just talking about having a copy in my email inbox so that if the company changes something on their own database I don't have to have printed or saved a web page (that I may not have even visited yet) to be sure that it's changed -- I've got an email.

                I'm sorry I confused you all by simultaneously expressing a desire for privacy.

  • Some problems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by flonker ( 526111 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @02:53AM (#7732504)
    My roommate tried going paperless. The telephone company double charged him, and then refused to refund the money. Instead, they gave him a credit for the amount. Problem being, he needed the money they took for food. (He has a nasty habit of letting his bills pile up until they're $300, $400, or more, and only paying when they threaten his service.)

    He also had the gas company claim they didn't receive payment. They did. He showed them proof. Problem resolved, but it was still quite a hassle.

    Long story short, he doesn't do any electronic billing of any sort anymore. (BTW, we're on the south side of Chicago, in case anyone cares.)

  • paytrust / paymybills (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @03:21AM (#7732597)
    i've been using paymybills.com (now paytrust.com [paytrust.com] for years now.

    I am a rather disorganized person, so i was looking for some service to simplify my management of bills. Online banking services at the time i signed up for paymybills only offered bill payment, not bill receipt. even now, i don't think that anyone else provides such a complete service.

    with paytrust, the beauty (or terror, depending on your viewpoint) is that they receive all of your bills. Bills that are electronically deliverable are handled electronically. those that are not are snail-mailed to them, where they have an army of drones ready to scan them in as jpgs so that you can view them online.

    there are the usual email notifications, scheduling, selective automatic payment of bills( you specify which bills, when, how much, limits, etc, as you would expect). you can also write checks like you would with a bank online payment system.

    yes there are privacy concerns, and it is a little scary to no longer physically recieve bills (but also nice! less mail!) but i wagered that paytrust, a company in the business of providing this service was less likely to screw up than me, someone highly experienced at screwing up bill paying. to my knowledge, paytrust has yet to make any mistake. Something very private doesnt have to be sent to them.

    i cant recommend them more highly.

    • Yes, paytrust/paymybills rules. I been using it since the Anthrax attacks. I put my tinfoil hat on and didn't answer the mail at all for 3 months. Got me removed from all the junkmail lists because they thought I was dead. I encourage everyone to try it, it's only $9 a month.
      • You can moderate it as funny, but it's all true.

        It actually took me 2 or 3 days of consecutive phone calls to the post office to get my mail started again.

      • "Got me removed from all the junkmail lists because they thought I was dead."

        I know you are lying because this, sir, will NEVER HAPPEN.

        If you die they hire somebody to dig your grave up and stick shit in it (or on your headstone as the case may be). They probably install a PC down their so you can still get spam and messenger popups.
        • Hahhaha

          I do get junk mail now.. But it took quite awhile to build up, and I don't think I'm up to "pre anthrax" levels.

          Still, I would love to be rid of snail mail entirely.

  • Personally I have almost all of my bills set up to be paid automatically each month via EFT (electronic funds transfer) from either my checking or credit card account.

    But I still get paper for most all of my bills. I guess I just don't quite trust the companies quite enough to go all electronic. Plus, it's actually quite a bit easier to remember to file a piece of paper than it is to remember to download an electronic statement and save it.

    My company wanted to move everyone to online-only pay statements
  • Save the HTML of the confirmation page, if the site allows it (some scripted pages won't fucking save!); otherwise, print it. But then you're back to paper, and now the cost is yours!

    I have had one problem. I use the free version of sneakemail, which allows 10MB bandwidth per month. One month I exceeded that bandwidth (and failed to realize it) because of freaking spammers spamming the sneakemail address I used to post to usenet. Sneakemail stopped forwarding my email, and I never received some of the
    • Save the HTML of the confirmation page, if the site allows it (some scripted pages won't fucking save!)

      If the page has been rendered in your browser, then you've already got the HTML of the confirmation page on your computer. The trick is getting around the (pretty useless) scripts people use to prevent you 'viewing source', and none of them are hard to defeat.
    • Just print it to postscript, then convert to pdf.

      I do this for all sorts of documentation that I fear may not be around later (news story archives)
      Easy, readable, electronic.
  • I once had a cable company (TCI - this was awhile back...) cash a $21 check for $26! My bill was $26, had been for some while, but I was disputing a $5 "administrative fee" and had been paying $21 per month. One month I noticed my previous balance had hit "$0" without the fee having been reversed - checking with my bank, it turned out they'd somehow managed to turn my $21 check into $26, I still don't know how... I eventually got it taken care of, but while over time I moved to direct-debit for all my bil

  • What about a Combo? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fuzzybunny ( 112938 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @07:49AM (#7733323) Homepage Journal

    I have my account with the Swiss post office, which works pretty nicely (although you could insert any Swiss bank in its place--bank transfer numbers are standardized and inter-bank payments don't cost extra.)

    There are some regularly occurring, fixed-amount bills (gym, rent, etc.) for which I have standing payment orders. Anything occasional or variable, I get a paper bill in the mail, with a payment slip.

    This is about 1/3 of an A4 piece of paper, containing recipient, amount, and payer, as well as bank info. It has a long-ass numerical code (about 25 numbers) which, along with the recipient account, I have to type into my online banking page.

    When I've paid a bill, I just write 'paid date xyz' on the slip and archive it for 2 years--works a charm. The post office also sends me a paper printout of my account activity every month.

    It's a great system, it sounds like it's a lot of effort, but I can pay my bills once a month within about 20 minutes time, including archiving paperwork. And I have both electronic and tangible means of tracking my payments.
    • Am also a swiss post user, and to be complete, they have also a online bill system that interface for regular bills, currently only a few companies (phone, railways, ...).

      They also offer a special direct payment method for websites.

  • I use Paytrust.com. They work by having you change your billing address so your bills actually get sent to a PO box (they are large enough they were given their own zip code so far) They scan your bills in and send you an email when they arrive, telling you how much the bill is for and to whom it needs to be paid, as well as the due date. You sign in online (they have a signature on file) and click on 'pay' (or you can view your scanned bill online) and they pay the bill either with EFT (my capitol one
    • I use PayTrust and it only costs $9/month.
    • We've been using PayTrust for 3+ years now, and it's great. You can set up recurring payments, rules for paying incoming bills (always pay full amt, pay as long as it's under $X, don't automatically pay). They notice and email you when they think you've not received a bill. They (can) email you when a bill's about to be overdue to remind you. They can draft checks and EFTs from multiple accounts (which also means you can easily change banks). I can have a check cut and mailed to anyone online. We buy
  • It depends on what you mean by "paperless billing."

    Many companies are offering the ability to directly debit your account automatically each month. If that's what you're talking about, you DO NOT want this.

    The problem is, there is very regulation of this. I believe there have been related slashdot stories which probably have better details than I'll be able to provide, but in a nutshell, once you give them access to your account -- wether it's a cable company billing you for services, a bank auto-paying

  • Don't sign up for online bill payment through the individual companies. That way you don't have much control, and it would be a huge fight if their records were incorrect.

    I use firstib.com, and they've been fantastic. They are set up to receive e-bills from anybody set up to do that, which turned out to be something like 3/4 of all my bills. The bills show up, and I get a notification, and go in and manually pay them. (You can set it up automatically, but I prefer to do it myself)

    This way, if a compan
  • Nothing says, "You did so receive payment for that bill, you fucktards!" quite like a cancelled check.

    I'm all for automating every aspect of my life, but the one exception I make is bill payment. I just don't like the idea of giving many entities the ability to remove funds from my checking account. They can assure me all they want that it will never happen without my consent, but I'm not buying it.

    I've even had problems with monthy charges to my credit card-- a couple years ago Cingular was supposed to p
  • Sprint is notorious for misbillings, and it is never in your favour. I would not recommend going paperless if you use Sprint for any of your communication needs. It is much easier for them to sneak in a $150 charge for whatever... Always look over your sprint bill because they suck ass and try and steal money from you...
    • Actually, I found a mistake with SprintPCS this month, but having a paper bill would not have helped me. I paid online and they then credited the payment back to me. (They said my account was closed. Very odd, since I am still using it.) I noticed that they were saying that I owed more than my online bill said I owed. When I contacted them, they explained what happened. I did complain that I was not notified of the credit when I have an email address online. Said it wouldn't happen again, we'll see.
  • I love electronic statements. Stockpiling paper is a pain to me, cluttering, and just outright annoying. Really what I would like to see though is more of them in a standard, exportable format to make saving them easier.

    However, I have had problems with all the electronifying of my statements. I tried to get a mortgage a few months ago. I asked the loan officer if I could email her the html/pdf's of my bank and pay statements. nope. we need paper. So I curse a little at how behind the times they are, but
  • I am currently experiencing first hand mail theft and associated credit and bank fraud. This has convinced me that, while the big companies are not exactly to be trusted, the result of a paper correspondence method, in my case , has been much worse.

    It will probably mean saving more paper receipts in the long run though. A fair trade-off in my situation.

  • Bank of America gives you online banking with your checking account, and the nicest feature is that you can pay any source. This is because they are sending checks, not making electronic payments in your name.

    This has allowed me to go completely online (at least on my end, they are still analog banking) for my banking, this includes checks to my land lord, as well as my father.

    Although, I still get all my bills mailed to me, but that is solely for the reminder factor, with out that stack of mail, how woul

  • Experience tells me to not go paperless. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Look at it this way:

    Companies like to assume their customers are liars/thieves and are lying to weasel out of having to pay.

    Companies will always believe the incorrect data in their computers rather than the truth you speak when you call them to complain.

    Since the burden is always on you to prove them wrong, having paper they generated to back up your assertions is vital. Going paperless deprives you of this ammunition.

    Paperless won't truly work until companies stop this "the customer is always lying" a
  • I switched to Paymybills/Paytrust (E*Trade just divested them) several years ago, after an incident where I needed to produce a 6-month-old credit-card statement and couldn't. They archive everything for a year. At the end of the year, they charge me something like $20 to get a CD with images of all my bills. If I need a copy, I can print it out. So far, nobody has whined about forgery possibilities (with modern computer tools, I could forge any paper bill just as well anyway).

    I don't want to say that

  • Well, I payed with online billing once, and little did I know, I was signing myself up for paperless billing! I gave them my e-mail address that I use for non-personal correspondence, and I've been locked out of that mailbox for a while now, so I have been recieving bills and didn't realize it until the electric company sent me a disconnect notice!
  • This is really not "paperless", but in the end it is.

    At this point I want a paper bill to come in the mail. I then scan it then PDF it. I then have multi page PDFs that print out nicely. I then have the bills shreaded and recycled.

    All but 2 of my bills have auto-payment to debit/credit card. I have them go against my credit card then pay off the cr4edit card each month. I would do it against my debit card (aka checking account) but then I would be affraid of a bill hitting it with not enough money in ther

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