Moment of boredom OT

[Tim Lamb]

Am I slow to wake up or is there a determined effort to force online handling of accounts?

Currently, British Gas are playing the *you supplied gas readings to our online site so we know you don't need a posted invoice delaying tactic*. We have reached the *your bill is available to read online* stage.

From experience with other suppliers, particularly banks, if you use their download facilities, they promptly stop sending you bills/statements by post. At least with NatWest they offer an option!

[Graeme]

In message , Tim Lamb writes

I have accounts with First Direct and Clydesdale. The former, I had to opt out of paper statements and the latter still send paper statements. I have used both online facilities for many years.

Having said that, I have not received paper statements from utility companies for many years, and don't remember actually opting out, although probably did. Perhaps they offered a discount for paperless accounts?

Council tax and business rates are always paper. Tax returns are online but tax codes and P60s are real paper.

[Andrew]

I always pay online or using their automated phone line but they insist on sending a paper bill.

Since I haven't used gas since 2003 I'm not going to help them reduce their costs and now that they are jacking up the daily standing charge by 50%, I shall tell them to cancel my account. If they want to spend their money sending a bloke out to remove a meter which has no further use to anyone, that's their problem.

bastards have even changed the 0800 107 0224 self-service phone number to an 0333 number which is charged like 01 or 02.

However, the 0800 number still works so I'll keep on using it. :-)

[Brian Gaff]

Hmm, I need all my stuff either via email or audio cd, and banks seem to be in a terrible mess with most of this disability awareness stuff, in many ways almost as bad as the NHS and the Police are. here we are in the 21st century, and variation from the old fashioned bit of paper still seems to completely bamboozle them when they present a photocopied bit of paper by email or on a web site instead of the characters that made the paper in the first place. OCR is an imprecise thing, especially on a bit of paper where several fonts are used and its printed by some kind of mass printing device. So when you ask for audio you get a cd made by ocr from a bit of paper, and then you complain its gobbledegook and they are surprised as iT can do anything can it not.. NO! Brian

[Max Demian]

Tell them your readings using the automated phone service - usually free and easier than online.

Barclays still send the paper statements too.

[alan_m]

to pay for all those smart meters!

[Mark]

just had the same thing with southeren water THEY decided as I pay online to put me on paper less billing rung them up and complained like F^&* and got ?10 compensation off bill, and they have taken me off paper less billing

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[Tim Lamb]

In message , Mark writes

The annoyance comes from my accountant who needs paper copies of telephone, electricity and anything else linked to business use.

[Andy Burns]

ITYF that's wants rather than needs. Sending stuff to our accountants consists of emailing a backup from the accounts package and a zip file containing PDFs of invoices, receipts, bank statements etc.

[Bob Eager]

When BT started offering a discount for paperless billing, I switched over.

When the bastards removed the discount, I insisted they switched back to posting me bills.

[Max Demian]

How did you know they removed the discount? They are increasing their rates all the time.

[Bob Eager]

Because they said so.