9 ms·

I've had to assist an elderly neighbour after her phone company cut off her phone service. Why? The way she had paid for it for the preceding 40 years was she

by Macha 5y ago

I've had to assist an elderly neighbour after her phone company cut off her phone service. Why? The way she had paid for it for the preceding 40 years was she would get the paper bill in mail, and then go down to the post office and organise payment using the details in that paper bill. They switched her over to paperless billing with an email that they've done so but you can opt out. She either did not understand the implications of this or missed the email, and is of the age where she would not remember when exactly she had last paid which bill. So without a paper bill to remind her, and her payment method being via the post office rather than the utility provider having billing details on record, she ended up not paying 3 months of bills and being cut off. It's not like they've offered this option to new customers for at least 15 years. So stuff like this it feels like they should just eat the cost of 12 letters per year until the remaining people availing of it age out.

jacquesm 5y ago
I think paper invoices should continue to be the way that this is handled unless otherwise requested, if only because you are - where I live - supposed to be able to prove this sort of thing for many years to the tax man. All these electronic records can disappear into thin air without you even realizing it has happened and good luck on your tax audit 7 years into the future.
- rosndo 5y ago
  Why would you ever need to prove this kind of transactions to the tax man as an individual? As a business it’s your duty to take care of your recordkeeping, print out the invoices if you so prefer.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    The first mortgage bill of the year typically includes tax statements for the prior year. Etc.
    - rosndo 5y ago
      I thought this thread was about utility bills, but okay, I’ll play along with your incredibly specific example. Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses.
      - justin66 5y ago
        > I thought this thread was about utility bills It was, which is why your comment starting with "As a business" was so bizarrely off-topic. > Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses. Yes. American homeowners can under most circumstances treat their mortage interest payments as tax deductable.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        rosndo 5y ago
        > It was, which is why your comment starting with "As a business" was so bizarrely off-topic. What do you mean by off-topic? Businesses receive utility bills too, and might genuinely be required to keep records of those. As far as I can tell, barring some very special circumstances, individuals never need to keep such records.
        justin66 5y ago
        > As far as I can tell, barring some very special circumstances, individuals never need to keep such records. This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance." People don't want these records at hand purely for their own amusement, which seems to be the assumption you're operating under here.
        locooon 5y ago
        In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit? > This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance." I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person. It really feels like you’re just coming up with stuff, utility bills aren’t normally tax deductible (unless you are a business). There’s no reason you’d ever need them for the taxman any more than your grocery story receipts.
  - phil21 5y ago
    It's an American urban legend passed down from a time it may or may not have mattered. What did matter in living memory (thus passed down to at least this generation) is that saving utility bills for 7 year can establish credit. My parents still tell me to do this to this day, since that's how they were able to qualify for a home loan having not participated in the credit system otherwise. Nowadays most such transactions are reported to a credit bureau, so they are either already on record or (almost?) no banks will care to see them.
    - SilasX 5y ago
      Huh? Paid utility bills don't help to establish a credit history on your credit report even today.
      - amflare 5y ago
        It doesn't, but multiple years worth of rent/utility bills can be used as a substitute so long as you are willing to jump through a couple extra hoops and pay a little bit more in interest for the privilege. My girlfriend just went though this process. She has no credit because she never got a CC and always saved up and paid for stuff like her car in cash. Over the winter she was looking to buy a house (didn't pan out for other reasons), and basically her only option was getting a loan manually underwritten. Part of that process was using a minimum of 2 years worth of bills as a replacement for a credit score. And the only loans available were several points more expensive than she could have gotten if she was able to do things the "normal" way.
        SilasX 5y ago
        Yes, that was my point. If you can get the lender to look at your history, it matters, like anything else. But those transactions do not establish a credit history associated with your credit score.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  All these electronic records can disappear into thin air without you even realizing it has happened and good luck on your tax audit 7 years into the future. I've never understood the value of "paperless" to the consumer. The benefit to the company is the savings of 3½¢ of postage and mailing expenses. But to the consumer...? I pay my bills online, but I make sure I still get my statements by mail. I also balance my accounts from those statements each month, and every year I catch one or two errors, and they're almost always in favor of the banks. Logically, I should be able to do the same thing by looking at my accounts online. But paper statements present the information in a different way than online, often to comply with laws about clear billing and communication. What's on paper sometimes very different from what's on the screen.
  - Double_a_92 5y ago
    Yeah the paperless system is horrible unless you are a person that strictly organizes things. There are so many different places where you have to go to collect your digital bills, and sometimes you just end up forgetting. In Switzerland we luckily have a system where companies can send their bills directly into your eBanking system so they are all collected there. But if a company doesn't support that, it's much easier to keep the paper bill.
dazc 5y ago
Ironically, my dad sometimes receives random scam bills via email from [insert well-known company name here] and I tell him to instantly delete them.
- berkes 5y ago
  Makes me think, that, indeed, the extra friction of paper mail, holds some scammers at bay. When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative. Edit: whereas with email, you proably need just one of the 10.000 to bite in order to break-even. Whereas the phone company (or any legit business) can easily carry those extra €0.40 or so for each bill. They can even simply forward the costs to the customer. Mailing invoices by snail-mail is a practical anti-scam measure, the more I think about it.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Also it’s hard to send letters internationally while making them look domestic.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    This is a bizarre idea. Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks. > When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative Try to do think about the math here. What kind of scam mail are you sending to reach such bad ROI? Let’s imagine these are fake utility bills for around 50 euros and total cost to the scammer is 1 euro per letter. Your success rate would have to be incredibly bad for the ROI to be negative. Now, target tenants of rental properties instead and tell them they need to pay their rent to a new account. Profits go up 10-100x, costs stay the same.
    - lb1lf 5y ago
      > This is a bizarre idea. > Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks. -While that is true, it is impractical on at least a couple of levels: a) You need to get that fake mail into the postal system, somehow - and do so in a way which escapes attention. b) (The worrying bit, if you're a scammer) - You've just gone from attempted fraud (sending out scam emails) to defrauding the postal service of whatever country you try to pull this one off in; the authorities are quite likely to take a dim view of your efforts.
adriand 5y ago
I recently endured a Kafka-esque nightmare with my bank. I had this personal VISA card for several years but I rarely used it because I also have a Mastercard that I prefer. Anyway, two years ago when I started my current venture I opened a business bank account with my preferred bank for business banking (same bank I had the personal VISA through), so I applied for a business VISA. At the same time, I told them I wanted to cancel my personal VISA, because I don't need three credit cards. No problem, did the paperwork and left the card at the bank. A couple of weeks ago, I received this stern letter informing me that I'm "not acting in accordance with my cardholder agreement / unpaid bills / unfulfilled obligations / we've cancelled your account / etc." It lists a card number I don't recognize. I call them right away. Turns out it was the personal VISA I cancelled two years ago. Around six months ago, a transaction went through on the account. Then I didn't pay off the transaction. Of course I didn't: I received no notice, no mail, no phone call, nothing. Why would I, for a card that at that point had been cancelled for 1.5 years? So after months of "defaulting" they freaked out, "cancelled" the card, put a black mark on my credit rating, and sent me that letter. Meanwhile I have been doing business with the bank, and with my business VISA (same exact companies!) the whole time. Trying to rectify this issue was a bureaucratic nightmare, where I got shuttled from my bank branch over to VISA and back again. It featured enjoyable conversations that started with things like, "for identity verification purposes, please give me the three digits on the back of your card" (hadn't had it in two years!) and ended with "I'm afraid we can't verify your identity". What was especially frustrating was I managed to find the paperwork for the card cancellation. I have a signed and dated document that says right on it, "Card destroyed in branch". After seven or eight interactions with VISA and my bank, I finally managed to get them to resolve the issue. But this all could have been avoided had they simply called me or mailed me a letter. Instead, they claimed that they'd sent statements to the "online portal" which, of course, I did not have access to, since I'd closed the account!
- jeromegv 5y ago
  Same thing happened with me and MBNA, they just never sent me physical bill OR an email for a transaction I had no idea occurred (because I had canceled the card!) and then put a mark on my credit report because I had a debt that was not resolved. All of this for... $7
AniseAbyss 5y ago
"they should just eat the cost" No consumers will eat the cost of a bunch of boomers who want to keep using cheques. And here's what will happen: the non boomer consumers will choose a cheaper bank. So unless the government wants to pick up the bill any sensible company will tell those senior citizens to get with the times.
- kradeelav 5y ago
  Checks are awesome - I use them all the time and I'm at least a third of the age of the elderly. Accessibility is huge to think about especially with "requireables" like the banks, and so it's just good practice and the right thing to do to think about the elderly and edge cases for folks who don't do email/smartphones. It pays to have empathy to all cross sections of society, not just the ones that are the most visible. :)
  - Femtio 5y ago
    Checks are ridiculously stupid. They are not save, expensive and you need to go to the bank to cash them in. All of this just because our society is to stupid? Old people are not stupid, they are just old. They should be able to either teach themselves or being teached. Our society should focus on helping them to navigate the current world and not try to keep things like checks alive. And I'm pissed about this though because I believe it's a mindset thing which needs to change to be able to act on real problems like climate change. When I talk to old people about solar energy holy shit do they care more about how those Solarpanel look at buildings then the benefit of them. If we don't help those people they are being limited by society one way or the other anyway!
    - jjav 5y ago
      > you need to go to the bank to cash them in No you don't. You can scan them in many cases these days, or mail them in. Can also deposit in ATMs. I cash checks all the time and haven't physically been to my bank in over 20 years, as the nearest branch is ~3000 miles away.
  - 5y ago
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Doing that by email is a real dick move. They should send a letter with the last bill. And do it opt in of course. Old people are exactly the type of people that would carefully study letters that come in the post. Unlike people my age that would bin anything that comes with the bill thinking it's probably just commercial crap. But of course this is precisely the reason they do it by email. Dark pattern..
- pndy 5y ago
  > And do it opt in of course. In my case, ISP charges you extra if you decide to keep the paper bills instead going for "eco bill" pdf file send by an email; same goes if you decide to opt-out from company selling your number elsewhere. Last time while getting new contract, 3 different people at local company's office tried to convince me that I can "win some fantastic rewards" if I decide to let them do with my number and personal information whatever they like. I did opt-outed but they manage to sell all my numbers present on account elsewhere and somehow every month around time when bills arrive, I'm getting bombarded by robocalls - either about photovoltaics or central heating replacements. They claim they didn't do it but they can't explain why newly added number that has all opt-outs receives calls at the same time with the rest.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    In my case, ISP charges you extra if you decide to keep the paper bills I'm old enough to remember when banks and other companies would charge extra for the privilege of paying online.
    - Arrath 5y ago
      Oh they still do. Some of them, anyway. Like my electric utility.
  - Double_a_92 5y ago
    It's probably still cheaper to pay that small extra fee. I am usually an organized person but in the last 4-5 years I still forgot to download my credit card bill 4 times, which caused a 30$ late fee every time.
waterboigh 5y ago
> She either did not understand the implications of this or missed the email, and is of the age where she would not remember when exactly she had last paid which bill. So without a paper bill to remind her, and her payment method being via the post office rather than the utility provider having billing details on record, she ended up not paying 3 months of bills and being cut off. That's so horribly absurd - have just left a utility company, we would send you paper notices leading up to shut-off regardless of paperless opt-in status. Having a customer without water was considered far worse than wasting a little extra litter in the grand-scheme.
moron4hire 5y ago
> is of the age where she would not remember when exactly she had last paid which bill I've been of that age since I was 18
fortran77 5y ago
My bank (Bank of America) has this "dark pattern" where they try to switch you to paperless statements and billing every time you log into their website. Each time you log in you get a popup about paperless billing. If you click the "default" big button, you've opted in to it. You have to look for a little tiny text link to keep getting paper bills. I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card. I used to look for the bill in the mail as my reminder to pay it for the month.
- Double_a_92 5y ago
  > I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card. I'm 29 and the same thing also happened to me. It's also so annoying that every time you have to log in into their website to download the bill... They could at least email it to you.
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  >I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card. The article was talking about a 78 year old, and you're 59, but this is a problem that will not go away if it isn't addressed. One day even Zoomers will be confused by needing to pay their bills using their wet-wired neurolink to an orbiting drone, and they'll be unable to because their tiny house doesn't have a v9000 laser alignment defragmenter. And then the bank will send a Terminator to their doorstep to deactivate their iLegs for non-payment. Dealing with real people, that you have a prior relationship with, in paper (or parchment, or papyrus, or clay) has a robust tradition that everybody can understand or at the very least deal with. I don't mind technological solutions, but they had better be as robust as being able to call up Dave and having him work out the problem.
Sebb767 5y ago
> So stuff like this it feels like they should just eat the cost of 12 letters per year until the remaining people availing of it age out. I worked in a related field and the cost of this is really not the postage. Your billing system needs to support sending paper bills, everywhere you have customer communication you'll need to add the paper way, the format is different, you still need a way for your billing system to actually send those letters, you accounting needs to check for it etc etc. Also, every time you discuss a change in your systems, you need to consider the edge case of these 12 customers. The letters themselves are cheap, supporting paper in every system you have is the real cost. I agree that they should have handled this better, no questions asked, but it's not like we're just talking about pennies in postage.
bghfm 5y ago
Same thing happened to my Dad with AT&T
jjav 5y ago
Paperless billing is such a nuisance. I get too much email and I'm far too busy, so anything in the email queue is quickly forgotten. I don't have the time or energy to be re-reviewing emails every day for bills that might be coming due soon. I try to get all bills on paper. Then I just write the due date on the envelope when it arrives and keep them sorted by due date in a neat pile on my desk. Impossible to miss a due date that way.

by Macha 5y ago

jacquesm 5y ago

I think paper invoices should continue to be the way that this is handled unless otherwise requested, if only because you are - where I live - supposed to be able to prove this sort of thing for many years to the tax man. All these electronic records can disappear into thin air without you even realizing it has happened and good luck on your tax audit 7 years into the future.

rosndo 5y ago
Why would you ever need to prove this kind of transactions to the tax man as an individual? As a business it’s your duty to take care of your recordkeeping, print out the invoices if you so prefer.
- kube-system 5y ago
  The first mortgage bill of the year typically includes tax statements for the prior year. Etc.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    I thought this thread was about utility bills, but okay, I’ll play along with your incredibly specific example. Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses.
    - justin66 5y ago
      > I thought this thread was about utility bills It was, which is why your comment starting with "As a business" was so bizarrely off-topic. > Is this a weird american thing? At least here in the UK mortgage interest deductions are only applicable to businesses. Yes. American homeowners can under most circumstances treat their mortage interest payments as tax deductable.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - rosndo 5y ago
        > It was, which is why your comment starting with "As a business" was so bizarrely off-topic. What do you mean by off-topic? Businesses receive utility bills too, and might genuinely be required to keep records of those. As far as I can tell, barring some very special circumstances, individuals never need to keep such records.
        justin66 5y ago
        > As far as I can tell, barring some very special circumstances, individuals never need to keep such records. This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance." People don't want these records at hand purely for their own amusement, which seems to be the assumption you're operating under here.
        locooon 5y ago
        In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit? > This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance." I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person. It really feels like you’re just coming up with stuff, utility bills aren’t normally tax deductible (unless you are a business). There’s no reason you’d ever need them for the taxman any more than your grocery story receipts.
- phil21 5y ago
  It's an American urban legend passed down from a time it may or may not have mattered. What did matter in living memory (thus passed down to at least this generation) is that saving utility bills for 7 year can establish credit. My parents still tell me to do this to this day, since that's how they were able to qualify for a home loan having not participated in the credit system otherwise. Nowadays most such transactions are reported to a credit bureau, so they are either already on record or (almost?) no banks will care to see them.
  - SilasX 5y ago
    Huh? Paid utility bills don't help to establish a credit history on your credit report even today.
    - amflare 5y ago
      It doesn't, but multiple years worth of rent/utility bills can be used as a substitute so long as you are willing to jump through a couple extra hoops and pay a little bit more in interest for the privilege. My girlfriend just went though this process. She has no credit because she never got a CC and always saved up and paid for stuff like her car in cash. Over the winter she was looking to buy a house (didn't pan out for other reasons), and basically her only option was getting a loan manually underwritten. Part of that process was using a minimum of 2 years worth of bills as a replacement for a credit score. And the only loans available were several points more expensive than she could have gotten if she was able to do things the "normal" way.
      - SilasX 5y ago
        Yes, that was my point. If you can get the lender to look at your history, it matters, like anything else. But those transactions do not establish a credit history associated with your credit score.
reaperducer 5y ago
All these electronic records can disappear into thin air without you even realizing it has happened and good luck on your tax audit 7 years into the future. I've never understood the value of "paperless" to the consumer. The benefit to the company is the savings of 3½¢ of postage and mailing expenses. But to the consumer...? I pay my bills online, but I make sure I still get my statements by mail. I also balance my accounts from those statements each month, and every year I catch one or two errors, and they're almost always in favor of the banks. Logically, I should be able to do the same thing by looking at my accounts online. But paper statements present the information in a different way than online, often to comply with laws about clear billing and communication. What's on paper sometimes very different from what's on the screen.
- Double_a_92 5y ago
  Yeah the paperless system is horrible unless you are a person that strictly organizes things. There are so many different places where you have to go to collect your digital bills, and sometimes you just end up forgetting. In Switzerland we luckily have a system where companies can send their bills directly into your eBanking system so they are all collected there. But if a company doesn't support that, it's much easier to keep the paper bill.

dazc 5y ago

Ironically, my dad sometimes receives random scam bills via email from [insert well-known company name here] and I tell him to instantly delete them.

berkes 5y ago
Makes me think, that, indeed, the extra friction of paper mail, holds some scammers at bay. When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative. Edit: whereas with email, you proably need just one of the 10.000 to bite in order to break-even. Whereas the phone company (or any legit business) can easily carry those extra €0.40 or so for each bill. They can even simply forward the costs to the customer. Mailing invoices by snail-mail is a practical anti-scam measure, the more I think about it.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Also it’s hard to send letters internationally while making them look domestic.
- rosndo 5y ago
  This is a bizarre idea. Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks. > When you have to pay the postage and printing costs, it is far less attractive to throw out 10.000 scam mailings, because the ROI is quite likely negative Try to do think about the math here. What kind of scam mail are you sending to reach such bad ROI? Let’s imagine these are fake utility bills for around 50 euros and total cost to the scammer is 1 euro per letter. Your success rate would have to be incredibly bad for the ROI to be negative. Now, target tenants of rental properties instead and tell them they need to pay their rent to a new account. Profits go up 10-100x, costs stay the same.
  - lb1lf 5y ago
    > This is a bizarre idea. > Scammers printing scam letters can just as easily print fake postmarks. -While that is true, it is impractical on at least a couple of levels: a) You need to get that fake mail into the postal system, somehow - and do so in a way which escapes attention. b) (The worrying bit, if you're a scammer) - You've just gone from attempted fraud (sending out scam emails) to defrauding the postal service of whatever country you try to pull this one off in; the authorities are quite likely to take a dim view of your efforts.

adriand 5y ago

I recently endured a Kafka-esque nightmare with my bank. I had this personal VISA card for several years but I rarely used it because I also have a Mastercard that I prefer. Anyway, two years ago when I started my current venture I opened a business bank account with my preferred bank for business banking (same bank I had the personal VISA through), so I applied for a business VISA. At the same time, I told them I wanted to cancel my personal VISA, because I don't need three credit cards. No problem, did the paperwork and left the card at the bank. A couple of weeks ago, I received this stern letter informing me that I'm "not acting in accordance with my cardholder agreement / unpaid bills / unfulfilled obligations / we've cancelled your account / etc." It lists a card number I don't recognize. I call them right away. Turns out it was the personal VISA I cancelled two years ago. Around six months ago, a transaction went through on the account. Then I didn't pay off the transaction. Of course I didn't: I received no notice, no mail, no phone call, nothing. Why would I, for a card that at that point had been cancelled for 1.5 years? So after months of "defaulting" they freaked out, "cancelled" the card, put a black mark on my credit rating, and sent me that letter. Meanwhile I have been doing business with the bank, and with my business VISA (same exact companies!) the whole time. Trying to rectify this issue was a bureaucratic nightmare, where I got shuttled from my bank branch over to VISA and back again. It featured enjoyable conversations that started with things like, "for identity verification purposes, please give me the three digits on the back of your card" (hadn't had it in two years!) and ended with "I'm afraid we can't verify your identity". What was especially frustrating was I managed to find the paperwork for the card cancellation. I have a signed and dated document that says right on it, "Card destroyed in branch". After seven or eight interactions with VISA and my bank, I finally managed to get them to resolve the issue. But this all could have been avoided had they simply called me or mailed me a letter. Instead, they claimed that they'd sent statements to the "online portal" which, of course, I did not have access to, since I'd closed the account!

jeromegv 5y ago
Same thing happened with me and MBNA, they just never sent me physical bill OR an email for a transaction I had no idea occurred (because I had canceled the card!) and then put a mark on my credit report because I had a debt that was not resolved. All of this for... $7

AniseAbyss 5y ago

"they should just eat the cost" No consumers will eat the cost of a bunch of boomers who want to keep using cheques. And here's what will happen: the non boomer consumers will choose a cheaper bank. So unless the government wants to pick up the bill any sensible company will tell those senior citizens to get with the times.

kradeelav 5y ago
Checks are awesome - I use them all the time and I'm at least a third of the age of the elderly. Accessibility is huge to think about especially with "requireables" like the banks, and so it's just good practice and the right thing to do to think about the elderly and edge cases for folks who don't do email/smartphones. It pays to have empathy to all cross sections of society, not just the ones that are the most visible. :)
- Femtio 5y ago
  Checks are ridiculously stupid. They are not save, expensive and you need to go to the bank to cash them in. All of this just because our society is to stupid? Old people are not stupid, they are just old. They should be able to either teach themselves or being teached. Our society should focus on helping them to navigate the current world and not try to keep things like checks alive. And I'm pissed about this though because I believe it's a mindset thing which needs to change to be able to act on real problems like climate change. When I talk to old people about solar energy holy shit do they care more about how those Solarpanel look at buildings then the benefit of them. If we don't help those people they are being limited by society one way or the other anyway!
  - jjav 5y ago
    > you need to go to the bank to cash them in No you don't. You can scan them in many cases these days, or mail them in. Can also deposit in ATMs. I cash checks all the time and haven't physically been to my bank in over 20 years, as the nearest branch is ~3000 miles away.
- 5y ago

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Doing that by email is a real dick move. They should send a letter with the last bill. And do it opt in of course. Old people are exactly the type of people that would carefully study letters that come in the post. Unlike people my age that would bin anything that comes with the bill thinking it's probably just commercial crap. But of course this is precisely the reason they do it by email. Dark pattern..

pndy 5y ago
> And do it opt in of course. In my case, ISP charges you extra if you decide to keep the paper bills instead going for "eco bill" pdf file send by an email; same goes if you decide to opt-out from company selling your number elsewhere. Last time while getting new contract, 3 different people at local company's office tried to convince me that I can "win some fantastic rewards" if I decide to let them do with my number and personal information whatever they like. I did opt-outed but they manage to sell all my numbers present on account elsewhere and somehow every month around time when bills arrive, I'm getting bombarded by robocalls - either about photovoltaics or central heating replacements. They claim they didn't do it but they can't explain why newly added number that has all opt-outs receives calls at the same time with the rest.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  In my case, ISP charges you extra if you decide to keep the paper bills I'm old enough to remember when banks and other companies would charge extra for the privilege of paying online.
  - Arrath 5y ago
    Oh they still do. Some of them, anyway. Like my electric utility.
- Double_a_92 5y ago
  It's probably still cheaper to pay that small extra fee. I am usually an organized person but in the last 4-5 years I still forgot to download my credit card bill 4 times, which caused a 30$ late fee every time.

waterboigh 5y ago

> She either did not understand the implications of this or missed the email, and is of the age where she would not remember when exactly she had last paid which bill. So without a paper bill to remind her, and her payment method being via the post office rather than the utility provider having billing details on record, she ended up not paying 3 months of bills and being cut off. That's so horribly absurd - have just left a utility company, we would send you paper notices leading up to shut-off regardless of paperless opt-in status. Having a customer without water was considered far worse than wasting a little extra litter in the grand-scheme.

moron4hire 5y ago

> is of the age where she would not remember when exactly she had last paid which bill I've been of that age since I was 18

fortran77 5y ago

My bank (Bank of America) has this "dark pattern" where they try to switch you to paperless statements and billing every time you log into their website. Each time you log in you get a popup about paperless billing. If you click the "default" big button, you've opted in to it. You have to look for a little tiny text link to keep getting paper bills. I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card. I used to look for the bill in the mail as my reminder to pay it for the month.

Double_a_92 5y ago
> I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card. I'm 29 and the same thing also happened to me. It's also so annoying that every time you have to log in into their website to download the bill... They could at least email it to you.
deltarholamda 5y ago
>I'm only 59, but without my paper bills, I've missed a few deadlines for credit card. The article was talking about a 78 year old, and you're 59, but this is a problem that will not go away if it isn't addressed. One day even Zoomers will be confused by needing to pay their bills using their wet-wired neurolink to an orbiting drone, and they'll be unable to because their tiny house doesn't have a v9000 laser alignment defragmenter. And then the bank will send a Terminator to their doorstep to deactivate their iLegs for non-payment. Dealing with real people, that you have a prior relationship with, in paper (or parchment, or papyrus, or clay) has a robust tradition that everybody can understand or at the very least deal with. I don't mind technological solutions, but they had better be as robust as being able to call up Dave and having him work out the problem.

Sebb767 5y ago

> So stuff like this it feels like they should just eat the cost of 12 letters per year until the remaining people availing of it age out. I worked in a related field and the cost of this is really not the postage. Your billing system needs to support sending paper bills, everywhere you have customer communication you'll need to add the paper way, the format is different, you still need a way for your billing system to actually send those letters, you accounting needs to check for it etc etc. Also, every time you discuss a change in your systems, you need to consider the edge case of these 12 customers. The letters themselves are cheap, supporting paper in every system you have is the real cost. I agree that they should have handled this better, no questions asked, but it's not like we're just talking about pennies in postage.

bghfm 5y ago

Same thing happened to my Dad with AT&T

jjav 5y ago

Paperless billing is such a nuisance. I get too much email and I'm far too busy, so anything in the email queue is quickly forgotten. I don't have the time or energy to be re-reviewing emails every day for bills that might be coming due soon. I try to get all bills on paper. Then I just write the due date on the envelope when it arrives and keep them sorted by due date in a neat pile on my desk. Impossible to miss a due date that way.