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Paperless Statements Not Always Best Choice, Says New Report
HughPickens.com writes: Ann Carrns reports at the NYT that despite a push by financial institutions to switch customers to digital statements from paper, the traditional hard-copy version may work better for some people, in particuar particular, older, less educated and lower-income consumers who may lack fast Internet connections at home. According to a new report from the National Consumer Law Center, even consumers who know the Internet may simply prefer paper, because statement notifications can easily be overlooked in a deluge of email. Also unlike paper statements, which can be neatly collected and filed away, going paperless on multiple accounts will mean having that information scattered under different user names and passwords. You may also be surprised to learn you have to pay for copies of some older statements. "If you have a system for organizing your paper statements, you should think about how that's going to translate online," says Jim Bruene. Finally you may not be able to go back as far with paperless statements. At Verizon, cellphone customers get up to 12 months of past statements. Customers can also request older statements dating back seven years for $5 per copy.
Under federal law, banks must obtain consent from consumers to deliver statements electronically. But banks are sometimes aggressive in encouraging customers to opt out of receiving paper statements. Last summer, holders of some Chase credit cards received pop-up ads when they logged into their accounts online, asking them to switch to electronic statements. The notice said "Action Required," even though no action was necessary if cardholders simply wanted to continue receiving paper statements. The screen showed buttons for "accept" and "manage my preferences," but not for "decline."
Under federal law, banks must obtain consent from consumers to deliver statements electronically. But banks are sometimes aggressive in encouraging customers to opt out of receiving paper statements. Last summer, holders of some Chase credit cards received pop-up ads when they logged into their accounts online, asking them to switch to electronic statements. The notice said "Action Required," even though no action was necessary if cardholders simply wanted to continue receiving paper statements. The screen showed buttons for "accept" and "manage my preferences," but not for "decline."
I like both paper and digital copies. Both have advantages.
Exactly. I continue to require paper statements be mailed to me. I refuse to allow ANY communication via email. But, I happily use the online services including check images and statements when i choose to.
The very moment that anyone even implies that paper is old, useless, wasteful, for the less educated(really?), lower income... I immediately label them inexperienced and clueless morons. That they think that their smartphone is secure or the only window to the rest of the world shows them for what they are. Idiot kids, that will whine like babies when their system collapses.
The push to paperless statements has nothing to do about the customer's desires, or the "going green" hogwash they advertise on the envelopes. The companies are pushing for paperless because paying people to print them out, stuff them envelopes, and then paying postage for 100k's of customers every month is an regular expense that eats into their bottom lines. Automatically pushing out a pdf by email, or posting it on a server, costs pennies and doesn't require nearly as many employees to accomplish.
This push is analogous to the self-scan checkouts at the supermarket. They're just trying to get rid of staff and get you to provide the service yourself.
I will always get paper statements from Comcast and I will always pay the monthly bill with a nice paper check because that is the only way I can screw with the bastards.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
For years, one of my banks wanted me to go paperless, while not offering anything similar to statements. I could only view transactions on a page (a page that did not print properly).
Then, the bank stated offering PDF downloads. However, when my credit card was suspended due to fraud, I could no longer log in and view that account.
Recently, when preparing for taxes, I downloaded the PDF statements. But getting to each statement took far too many clicks.
What is so hard to understand about the idea that I want 100% reliable and easy access to statements that look like paper statements?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I would be happy with encrypted emails. So many of the security quandaries posed by encrypted email are either moot or already at least as bad in this case because the bank is already delivering the metadata not encrypted end-to-end (e.g. the title indicating a statement is ready for download, their name, your name). How hard would it really be for banks to setup encrypted email for those willing to setup S/MIME?
For me, the main problem with paperless statements is that they don't email you the statement - they require you to login to some website (with a name/password you might not remember), then navigate around the site until you find the statement, then download it. That's a real pain. I would much prefer to see a new email in my inbox, click on it to read it, then press "Archive" and be able to search for it (by company name) whenever I wanted in the future.
I understand the reasons for this - email has historically been insecure. But nowadays major email providers like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all use STARTTLS. So there should be no obstacle to sending statements and notices by email to most people's addresses.