Paperless billing

[mtbc]

Our energy provider e-mailed me to say, We're moving your energy bills online. I replied and asked them not to. Paperless statements do seem to be an increasingly potent attractor. However, it also causes tension with bureaucratic requirements, from banks and governments and whatnot, for sufficient proof of address. For example, mst3kmoxie was not able to open a bank account here in Scotland for some time, for lack of acceptable documents addressed to her; items like her National Health Service card do not count. For mst3kmoxie's family visa we need plenty of evidence that both she and I live at the same address and statements printed by us from the Internet do not count. Additionally, I have doubts about continuing access to online statements after one ceases to be a customer.

I do not know how these competing interests will settle but I try not to be caught badly in between. I have sympathy with those EU citizens who since the referendum have been scrambling to find adequate documentary evidence that they have been resident in the UK for the past five years. I know some people who I would doubt could easily rustle up a year's worth. Paperless billing can thus be a significant inconvenience.

Comments

[goldibehr]

I think paperless billing is a win-win. All of our energy providers let me download a .pdf each month. The pdf looks exactly like a "real" bill. I archive them all.

I suspect if you printed the bill on a laser printer, it would be accepted by a bureaucrat.

[mtbc]

Part of the issue is the cost of being wrong about that: ranging from not being able to open a bank account to not being able to enter, or having to leave, the country, or at the least weeks of further waiting while a documentary deficiency is addressed. Admittedly the minority of bills have a part that is clearly meant to be a horizontal perforation but also I have only a monochrome laser printer at home, with a decent color one I could probably get away with more. I can see their point: given a valid original, with appropriate software the textual customer-specific details on PDFs are typically trivial to edit, thus forge, just as it was fun to undo the poor redacting on PDFs of partially declassified documents.

Having said all that: I largely agree. My preference would be for all this to settle at some sane point, for example such that bureaucrats will accept a home printout together with a signed release that they can provide to the utility company or bank or whatever that assures that I permit them to confirm my details. I am flexible about what the solution is, I just want it to be confidently satisfiable by genuine applicants.

[mtbc]

I should add, I now see that their FAQ includes, Why have you stopped PDF bills?