A reader by the name of Tim contacted us earlier this week to highlight a “bugbear” of his that we have no doubt many others share – paperless billing.
In truth, his bugbear is not so much about paperless billing but about paperless billing that is rendered almost invisible by the manner in which the system is deployed by many providers.
“The widespread adoption of ‘paperless’ billing, particularly by utilities providers, is being used to reduce access by consumers to information on the costs of the services they are purchasing,” Tim writes. “Most, if not all, utility providers now provide a financial incentive for ‘paperless’ billing (or a penalty for receiving a physical paperbill),” he says.
He is not wrong and a person can “save” in the region of 3 per cent on some bills by opting for a paperless world. Or, sometimes, companies will charge people as much as €6 a month if they choose to get their bills delivered the old fashioned way.
But that is not Tim’s main concern.
He points out that, to most consumers, “paperless” billing might mean “an emailed copy of the paper bill formerly received” in the form of a pdf perhaps.
He might be happy enough with that – but that is not what he gets.
Tim says the utility providers he has dealt with “do not do this. What they provide is an online portal, where their customers must create an online account to access information on their bill.”
He argues that this is “a serious barrier to consumer information as the utility providers know that many (the majority?) of consumers have neither the time, energy, ability or commitment to do this”.
He argues that the “poor quality and sheer user-unfriendliness of their online portals is a further disincentive”. He gives us an example of the electricity providers he has dealt with. “They send an email each billing period with the total due.
“To get a detailed breakdown of usage and cost/charges, you must create an online account, which is a barrier to having information to compare with other providers.
“The format and content of electricity bills appears to be tightly regulated, presumably intended for the consumers benefit, but without easy access to this, the consumer is losing out. This is even more important with smart meters and time-of-day tariffs.”
We can second Tim’s findings when it comes to energy bills as the company we are with sends us a pretty terse email once every two months telling us how much we owe. It will only break down how it has arrived at the charge when we log on to its website – something we almost always fail to do.
Tim points out – pretty reasonably – that attaching a pdf of the prescribed format bill to an email is “zero-cost for the utility provider and should be mandatory. The use of ‘paperless’ billing is being used as an anticompetitive measure by reducing consumer’s access to information.”
This is not the first time we have written about paperless bills. In fact, we first highlighted the issue as potentially problematic more than 15 years ago.
It is not, however, going anywhere and the notion that we will return to paper bills is as fanciful as it is undesirable.
There are many advantages to the digital billing world in which we now live, not least when it comes to the environment.
If three million Irish consumers no longer get paper bills and statements for their electricity, gas, broadband, mobile phones, bank accounts and credit cards, that conservatively saves 48 million pages being printed each month. Spread that over a year and you are talking about half a billion pages.
The Internet tells us that one fairly small tree can make 10,000 pages, which means by switching to paperless billing we save more than 40,000 trees each year in this country alone.
Then, there is the time, effort and money saved by not producing the paper or delivering all the bills to homes around the country.
And, as consumers, paperless bills mean we don’t have to find a place to store all the paper or find a way to safely dispose of it when its usefulness has passed.
So, it is a win all round, really.
Now, having said all that, we take Tim’s point that the move to paperless billing has placed too many obstacles in the way of some people. And, like Tim, we can’t really understand why companies don’t send PDFs of the bills they would once have sent us via snail mail.
Pricewatch likes to think of itself as pretty savvy when it comes to bills but even we struggle to remember all the log-in details we need to be able to access the sites that carry the account information for the services we pay for so – like many people – we just trust that all is well with our accounts and think no more about it.
The good news is that people have rights to the correct information in certain circumstances and can request paper billing, free-of-charge, from their service providers if they cannot reasonably access or use an electronic billing.
Anyone who wants paper bills without being able to show they have access difficulties does, however, have to pay for the privilege.
