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Email is open. Every single one of those services you've listed could close down tomorrow. I mean I think you were joking, but just in case you weren't. When

Email is open. Every single one of those services you've listed could close down tomorrow. I mean I think you were joking, but just in case you weren't. When I sign up to get my Electricity bill, what do I give them? My Whatsapp? My Twitter?

BeetleB 5y ago
> When I sign up to get my Electricity bill, what do I give them? My Whatsapp? My Twitter? Postal address...?
- loloquwowndueo 5y ago
  Many utilities charge extra for paper bills. Screw that.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I have for some time wondered why that most obvious of institutions, the USPS, does not offer a digital counterpart to snail mail. E.g. getting digital mail to your postal address, or opening & scanning mail to make it available online, or provide a guaranteed digital delivery service, things like that. They have a pretty strong incumbent position to offer such a service. Perhaps it violates some government regulation on what services they can and cannot provide.
    - dvdkon 5y ago
      Here in the Czech Republic, the national postal service does offer a "digital snail-mail" or "bureaucratic email" and it's used for official communication by government branches, insurance companies and some big companies. Nobody wants to use it for simple receipts, because messages are paid. A centralised service like this from a traditional company (so no VC-backed company with a generous free tier) just can't compete against the "simplicity" of sending email.
  - andylynch 5y ago
    Really not unreasonable. Postage is expensive- on something like a mobile phone bill just that would be 1-2% of the gross, before printing etc. And moreover enormously wasteful of resources where email seems to work pretty well. (And for handling commercial invoices dealing with people still sending paper ones is an expensive irritation)
- zeckalpha 5y ago
  Big electricity prefers to send bills “paperless” using electronic mail.
recuter 5y ago
In many countries you increasingly can actually give your WhatsApp/local-equivalent. But sure, I'd say make yourself a sequestered legacy email address. One per utility.

BeetleB 5y ago

> When I sign up to get my Electricity bill, what do I give them? My Whatsapp? My Twitter? Postal address...?

loloquwowndueo 5y ago
Many utilities charge extra for paper bills. Screw that.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I have for some time wondered why that most obvious of institutions, the USPS, does not offer a digital counterpart to snail mail. E.g. getting digital mail to your postal address, or opening & scanning mail to make it available online, or provide a guaranteed digital delivery service, things like that. They have a pretty strong incumbent position to offer such a service. Perhaps it violates some government regulation on what services they can and cannot provide.
  - dvdkon 5y ago
    Here in the Czech Republic, the national postal service does offer a "digital snail-mail" or "bureaucratic email" and it's used for official communication by government branches, insurance companies and some big companies. Nobody wants to use it for simple receipts, because messages are paid. A centralised service like this from a traditional company (so no VC-backed company with a generous free tier) just can't compete against the "simplicity" of sending email.
- andylynch 5y ago
  Really not unreasonable. Postage is expensive- on something like a mobile phone bill just that would be 1-2% of the gross, before printing etc. And moreover enormously wasteful of resources where email seems to work pretty well. (And for handling commercial invoices dealing with people still sending paper ones is an expensive irritation)
zeckalpha 5y ago
Big electricity prefers to send bills “paperless” using electronic mail.

recuter 5y ago

In many countries you increasingly can actually give your WhatsApp/local-equivalent. But sure, I'd say make yourself a sequestered legacy email address. One per utility.