Snail Mail Bills Cost Extra
from the not-everyone's-happy-about-this... dept
I pay my bills online via my bank. I get most of them in the mail, and just pay them through my bank's online billpay system. However, according to this NY Times story, many companies are trying to get rid of the costs of printing and sending paper bills by charging people extra for getting a paper bill. This move is pissing off some people, who are afraid that their information isn't safe, or that it just makes it easier to screw up their bills. For me, the thing that seems most annoying is that each of these sites wants to do online billing via their own site. So, if you want to view your bills you need to separately log into each site, view the bill, and then pay the bill. This makes the process really annoying. This seems like (of all things) something that should be standardized, a la web services, so that anyone can easily aggregate all their bills in a single interface.
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No thanks, I will stick with paper.
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All upside... for the companies
By forcing you to pay online using their website and not some general pay service (bank or otherwise) you'll have to give that company your checking accounts routing number or your ATM/Credit Card number. This means no more late payments. You've now authorized the company to take the money they say you owe automatically. I certainly hope nothing goes wrong with your electric meter or that someone doesn't steal your credit card info. You'll be out the money, bouncing checks everywhere, facing fees up the wazzu for it and you'll have to get the company to realize there was a mistake and to return the money. The creditor gets paid and you have to prove your innocents in order to get your money back. Your payment will always be on time. There will no longer be a need for a grace period. It's the closest thing the creditor has to guaranteed ontime payments. You on the other hand must always have money available. There is no more putting the bill off due to a tight financial situation or waiting an additional 3 days for that next paycheck.
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Creditors are Automatically Moving You to Paperless
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