Don't think of the company as one single highly aligned entity. Probably what happened here was that a mid-level manager had a goal for 2021 to reduce paper bi

Don't think of the company as one single highly aligned entity. Probably what happened here was that a mid-level manager had a goal for 2021 to reduce paper billing by X percent. And came up with this as a quick trick to do it. Departments externalise negative effects to other parts of the company all the time. What they care about is their own goals and looking good to higher management. Not the interests of the company as a whole. This will only change when something causes a ruckus and top management finds out about it. Also, the company is not really losing anything, the customer will sign up again, has to pay reconnection fees and will probably be forced to e-bill "because paper billing is no longer available for new customers". Triple win for the company really. Of course the customer can move to another company but they'll probably want to keep their number and the whole portability rigmarole is much too difficult for this type of customer.