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T-Mobile Backs Off Plan To Charge $1.50 For Paper Bills
netbuzz writes "Following a torrent of customer complaints, bad publicity and the threat of a class-action lawsuit, T-Mobile has abandoned a plan announced this summer to charge any customer wanting a paper bill $1.50 per month. While the news is being cheered by many T-Mobile customers, it's not going to be as popular with others who praised the extra fee as an environmentally sound inducement to reduce paper use."
They could do just the opposite and give people a $1.50 reduction in their bill if they opt-in to a paperless billing system.
I personally like paper bills... It helps me keep track of when I've PAID those bills...
I doubt that they would have gotten the same reaction if they had offered a $1.50 discount to customers agreeing to receive electronic bills.
While I understand the environmental argument, paper bills make for accountability. With online-only billing, you have no way to resolve certain account disputes, because they hold all the data! I'm not putting on my tinfoil hat and saying they'll deliberately screw up the records and double bill you - but mistakes do happen. Having a paper trail is the best way to protect yourself from mistakes. Also, consider this: what happens to your account when you close it? How can you prove that you had the account once it's closed if it's online-only? With a paper trail, you can prove it! (This applies more to banks than cell phones...)
Give a "$1.50 a month Discount" to all customers asking to not have a paper bill sent.
This goes over very well if you give a discount instead of trying to boost your profit margin.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If T-mobile bills are anything like the ones in my post they could reduce paper by condensing the bills to just one page and stop including fliers to sell me more products. I suspect however, that this was more about another adding another charge and not about actually saving money.
There has been a law passed in my area that charges a few cents for plastic shopping bags. The assumption was that the charge would somehow go to bettering the environment. Instead it goes into the retailer's pocket. Revenue by legislation. Glad I use bins.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
I tried to go paperless with T-Mobile a few months ago and they keep sending me paper bills any way. Is this just to get an extra $1.50 out of me every month? Oh, and if you go paperless you have to agree to have automatic debit from your checking account...make sure you read that part of the fine print.
"Following a torrent of customer complaints" Is that torrent available on the Pirate Bay? I have been unable to find it anywhere.
Worse than that--instead of issuing signed PDFS, they'd probably do the same thing most online companies do, and either:
1) have some god awful non-platform agnostic flash application. I'm sorry--if it's for billing purposes, you need to support *MY* computer. I don't accept the notion of any software requirement to get my trash picked up, or pay for the phone bill on my plain old only does phone calls and SMS cellphone.
2) Use unsigned HTML--in which case I'll print it out anyway, as it's my understanding I need papercopies to comply with tax law. Thanks environmentalists--you've just made me use my own printer, with toner that's probably a worse impact on the environment than whatever they use at their billing facility. But that's okay... because...
most people won't even understand what it would mean to digitally sign a statement (so nobody implements it)... therefore stops me from hitting "view source"--changing my displayed bill from $125 to $25, saving the html, hitting print, and cutting them a check for $25?
Next week when they complain, I underpaid--I send them a copy of my perfectly legitimate bill for $25, and tell them that *they* have a computer error. Since I'm the only one with a paper trail, it's pretty much their error by definition. Every one of their backups says $125? Okay--but I'm still the only person with a legitimate paper trail...
Sorry--paper is out there for a reason.
Companies always pass it off as being "green", but that's not the real reason. T-mobile stores are still overly-lit, selling merchandise that's over-packaged, and handing out paper fliers.
The truth is that its expensive to print bills. And I don't blame them for wanting to get rid of them, but if you're going to save money, then pass a little of it on to me.
My bank just paid me $5 to go to e-bills and for me, that was enough.
Carrot vs. Stick
A paper bill is a legal document. An online bill carries no legal power whatsoever, leaving the account holder with no rights other than what the company wants the account holder to have.