General Chat

Hasn't the bank already covered the cost of the cheque?

I think Florence answered the question when she said "...the cost of printing off bills and paper is quite expensive and to be honest when you have a lot of bills,that takes up time and money producing a copy."

Either each customer opting for paper bills should bear the additional cost compared to paperless billing or the costs should be passed on to all customers in the form of a slight increase in all bills.

Ask yourself this - are you being charged more for opting for physical statements/bills or are you being charged less for opting to go paperless?

Most banks etc., do not do their own 'enveloping' but use an off site clearing house.

I know when I worked for RM we dealt with at least 10 of these type of businesses. They printed and posted work for all major banks and utility companies and all end of year reports.

Was cheaper for all those businesses to get someone else to do it!

Also I like my paperless billing, I was disappearing under a mound of paperwork that I felt I had to keep, and then had to shred (or burn on a bonfire at the right time of year) if I wanted to get rid.

Now I have very little to shred, but nothing leaves this house with any names, addresses, account numbers or barcodes on, it all goes in the shredder. I do spend a little time tearing up letters etc., so I just shred the important bits!!!

I am always amazed when I go to my SIL's and their rubbish is just full of their names addresses etc., I have mentioned it and she just does not seem to be bothered by it. Sadly it will take their ID being stolen before their cavallier attitude is sorted.

To irritate the matter even further, if that is possible, banks & utility companies are regularly pressuring us all to abandon paper billing completely & deal with everything online.

We will soon be hard pressed to be able to produce any original document because there simply won't be any. We are moving inexorably closer to a world without human contact, where we will carry on most of our day-to-day business, except the occasional visit to the pub, without ever laying eyes on another human face.

Very depressing!

good one Bernie :-),

My elderly mother is not computer literate at all, has no interest in the technical world we live in. When she goes shopping, she will go to an ATM and withdraw cash with her Eftpost card and then go shopping... I have given up trying to understand why she won't use the same card in the supermarket..

I opt for paper statements from the bank. We have to keep them for seven years and I know if I needed to produce a statement for the IRD , the bank would take great pleasure in charging me for searching and printing....

We run a small business and more and more of our mail is becoming electronic. I get a bit miffed when it costs me ink and paper to print invoices out which I then pay .. That said, some of our customers prefer to receive electronic bills from us. Swings and roundabouts - horses for courses :-D,

Dermot, perish the thought we should lose touch with other humans......