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."

Comments

Traditional banks are dead

[nospam007]

"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. "

For bank statements a 1200/300 baud phone connection should be sufficient.

As long as I don't have to pay for it, I don't care if they send the manager over to their home to tell them what they have in their account.

My bank has 5 years of online statements available, so I download all of them for the past year when I do my taxes, since I need them anyway then.

In the last 3 years I have been twice to a bank to get foreign currency, the only thing that I can't do online and the only people who were there were oldsters with a plastic bag full of invoices that they wanted the clerk to transfer money to, but they have to pay 3,5€ for each of those, so I don't care.

My bank had previously 20 tellers, now they have 1 information girl and 1 teller on a simple desk, that's it, the banks of our fathers are dead.

Re:Traditional banks are dead

[mh1997]

I was sued by a local business in small claims court. I brought in a printed copy of the electronic statement from my bank billpay with confirmation codes showing that I sent the online payment (the bank then cut a paper check and mailed it, the business was not set up for electronic payment). I also had a copy of the hard-copy, mailed statement from my bank with the same information. The judge did not accept my printed copy, he thought it was too easily faked. He did accept my hard-copy mailed statement from the bank and I won my case. This was small claims court, the rules are different than in other courts.

Re:Traditional banks are dead

[nukenerd]

The judge did not accept my printed copy, he thought it was too easily faked. He did accept my hard-copy mailed statement from the bank

In the UK, bank statements printed off the Internet are not generally acceptable legally. However, that does not stop the banks and building societies from nagging us to "Go paperless". Here is an example from the Coventry Building Society. Under Identification Requirements to open an account, it says among the documentation required :

Bank/building society statement less than 3 months old (not from Coventry Building Society) and not printed off the internet - original document [My emphasis]

. Yet elsewhere on the website (and on statements) it says :

If you are registered for Online Services .... why not switch to paperless statements?

Hypocrites.

Speed is mostly irrelevant

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

For bank statements, or any other official correspondence, what I really need is a (a) complete, (b) permanent record that is (c) automatically and (d) reasonably securely moved to be (e) 100% under my control.

So far, the only way that happens is if they mail me paper copies. It is remarkable that we have yet to solve this apparently simple problem with a more technologically sophisticated alternative, but until we do, I will continue to opt out of getting statements [only] electronically.

Re:Speed is mostly irrelevant

[zm]

For bank statements, or any other official correspondence, what I really need is a (a) complete, (b) permanent record that is (c) automatically and (d) reasonably securely moved to be (e) 100% under my control.

So far, the only way that happens is if they mail me paper copies. It is remarkable that we have yet to solve this apparently simple problem with a more technologically sophisticated alternative, but until we do, I will continue to opt out of getting statements [only] electronically.

If only someone invented a device that can be used to make a hardcopy of a document that is available online, your problem would have been solved.

Re:Speed is mostly irrelevant

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

But I don't just want "available online". That's the point. I also want automatically and reasonably securely delivered, so I always have a permanent copy of everything in the event of any dispute or audit.

When we have a system that gives me an effectively 100% safe electronic document vault, into which any service I use can push their statements, terms updates, etc. in some readily accessible and future-proof format, and over which they have no other control or influence, then we can talk.

Re:Speed is mostly irrelevant

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

No, it isn't sufficient, because it still relies on me manually going to their web site and downloading every statement for every service I use at the correct time.

And if I'm going to print it anyway, then from my point of view all I've got is what I had before anyway, but now at my own expense and in a format that is more likely to be challenged as fabricated if I ever have to rely on it in the event of a serious dispute.

Re:Speed is mostly irrelevant

[nukenerd]

Or you could use a PRINTER to make a hardcopy only when you need it, which 99.9% of the time, is NEVER.

Or you could get the BANK to use a printer to make a hardcopy and post it to you at their expense, so all you need is to pop it into the filing cabinet.

I often refer to past bank statements - only yesterday I needed to check what I paid by debit card for something I bought 11 months ago, for which I was claiming my money back under guarantee. Depending on your bank, but mine does not make it easy to see back past the current month and it is much faster to flick through paper copies anyway.

Worse issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Is entities (some of them governamental) requiring statements of 3rd party accounts (electrical, water, gas, bank, etc) for allowing things like residence address change.

And then, if you print yourself the statement from the pdf that those entities provide, they don't accept it.

Perhaps, if those entities, if they only provide electronic documents, they should be forced to have a way to validate such documents.

I believe PGP already did something like that for emails...

No Problem At All

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: No Problem At All

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And yet for most areas like this, the opposite will be true in practice.

No-one has ever broken into my home or office and stolen our entire filing system in seconds while we weren't looking.

No-one has ever remotely accessed the box file on the shelf next to me and rewritten the statement showing questionable transactions that we're currently disputing.

Re: No Problem At All

[Ol Olsoc]

on a stochastic level your smartphone is magnitudes more secure than any paper-based communication.

But on a practical level, no. I've never had the contents of my filing cabinets locked, the key changed, and then been told I have to send bitcoin to get the new key. Just think of the paper copy as a backup in the "solid ground" the radical old school backup system.

Re: No Problem At All

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

"Falsified" seems to imply a measure of malicious intent. In the cases I'm thinking of, I'm willing to trust that the problems were straightforward screw-ups. Most of them could plausibly have been a combination of a simple data entry error and a lack of adequate safeguards to detect inconsistent data or impossible situations automatically.

But again, this doesn't really matter; the fact is that their data was wrong at the time of the problem, and my businesses and I suffered damage as a result. Having incontrovertible records of my own, independent of what the other party's records said by the time the problem was discovered, has generally been the most reliable and efficient way to get someone to realise the error and make good the damage. And often, evidence they supplied themselves prior to whatever incident caused the corruption is the most convincing of all from their point of view.

In my experience, once you can get a real person with the ability to fix the problem to look at the place where the problem occurred and say "Hang on, that can't be right", you're usually 90% of the way to getting everything sorted out. It's breaking through whatever processes and barriers are in the way that tends to take a lot of time, because almost invariably those processes and barriers will be designed without considering the possibility that their own systems might not be working properly.

Not Advantage, it's Labor and Postage Costs!

[Irate Engineer]

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.

Re:Not Advantage, it's Labor and Postage Costs!

[penguinoid]

Stupid efficiency, saving money and resources. I'll show them!

Re:Not Advantage, it's Labor and Postage Costs!

[Razed By TV]

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.

A large part of the issue for me is that the electronic copy they provide is vastly inferior. The companies I deal with make it convoluted to download statements from their website. They use non-standard formats. They have buggy interfaces that don't function in Firefox. It is difficult to download multiple statements at once. And they rarely offer statements older than 12 months. That print statement will still be file away 18 months from now if I have some sort of computer failure, but may be difficult to replace if I only have an electronic copy. (I know, backups...)

Re:Not Advantage, it's Labor and Postage Costs!

[Archfeld]

If it is not saving ME money then why would I put myself out one iota for the vendor. If I go paperless it had better include a discount on the service and access to a limited number of free paper copies in case I need it for some other reason.

Re:Not Advantage, it's Labor and Postage Costs!

[tompaulco]

Yes, and they don't really save THAT much money compared to how much money in time hassle and opportunity cost that it costs the customer. They don't actually have staff print that stuff out and stuff envelopes. That is all done by machine. The postage for presort is much less than the price of a stamp. in truth, a large bank may save a few hundred thousand a year by going paperless. Their customers, however, will have expenses in the millions for their own hassle, record retention, paper costs, printing (if desired), etc.

Re:Not Advantage, it's Labor and Postage Costs!

[tompaulco]

This.

I agree with you entirely. Although my bank claims to make statements available for 7 years, immediately after one of my credit cards was suspended due to fraud, I wasn't able to log in and see any transactions. Paper copies don't have this problem.

Yes, and if you are a victim of identity theft, your paper statements will be your salvation. You will be unable to prove who you are and thus unable to access any of your online accounts.

Banks just don't get it.

[whoever57]

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?

Re:Banks just don't get it.

[fhage]

When opening any account that may generate taxable income, I always ask; "Will you send me a summary tax statement at the end of each year?"

Lately, the reply is "Yes! After you register and create an account, just log in and then swipe right on the PersonalServices emoji floating on your landing wall, pin "MyDocuments" to the Selector area, zoom out, scroll down, and long tap the individual statement in the list. You'll get a Special Offers flyer while you wait for your statement to be 'retrieved'. After it's done, the down arrow shaped cloud in the bottom right corner will turn gold so you can swipe it. Be sure to get our free app in the play store which provides you an EyeView and can squirt the doc to your tax app. If you still want to use a PC, click on the steam punk binocular icon, located on the PS wall to bring up the MyTeller IE plugin ..."

Me:That's nice, but I'd prefer we exchange public keys so you can send me signed statements in PDF form via email, that only I can open. I have several popular forms of U2F keys as well as my public key files on a USB stick.

Them: "We can't do that because email is not safe. That's how computers get infected."

Re:Implementation problem

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Implementation problem

[gmack]

In Canada the postal company took care of it. It's called Epost and I can file everything there.

Re:I want to control my statements

[drinkypoo]

It doesn't really matter that much if the statement is signed; you can always just log into online banking and retrieve the statement manually if you suspect its contents. Not that I'm against a crypto signature...

What about email?

[bluegutang]

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.

I switched a brokerage account to paperless

[QuietLagoon]

Then, after a few years, I closed the account. After the account was closed, I lost access to all of the account statements that were online, and I had no paper versions. Fortunately, the broker was able to recover the statements and send me paper copies. But it was a hassle.

.
Now I download the pdf statement for my important accounts each month and store them in my archive.

also for driving docs

[kencurry]

I switched to Geico recently, and I do love their phone app. But the last few times I've needed to show my insurance card, the f**ing app wanted to force an update right then and there - so I couldn't get to the proof of insurance without a lot of dicking around. So, I went back to printing out the damn thing and keeping it in the glove box.

I've been "crammed" several times

[tompaulco]

I've had several accounts "cram" me into electronic statements by sneaking some wording in somewhere that if you look at a statement online or something that you are automatically enrolled in electronic statements. American Express did it to me, Best Buy did it to me. Then the problem is that they don't bother to send you statement reminders in email either, so at some point you just start getting calls from them asking why you haven't sent a payment and start racking up huge late fees.
Even if they did send a statement, which they didn't, I checked spam and everything, it is not just the technically clueless who get the shaft, it is the technically competent as well. I get dozens of e-mails a day. If I get an email from a credit card, unless I am at that very moment prepared to deal with it and pay it, it is just going to get put on the back burner and ultimately forgotten. My paper bills sit in a pile on my desk, in date order and get dealt with.
Also, paper statements are not available online forever. If the government comes after you, they can demand paperwork for in some cases 7 years, and in some cases, from the beginning of time. It is up to you to have that information available, and if you depend on your third parties to keep that for you, you are SOL. Basically you need to save a local copy electronically, or print it out and store. So they are outsourcing their cost of doing business to you without providing you a nice discount for performing their job for them.
As far as banks go, I go to my bank about 3 to 4 times per week. Most of those are for deposits. Yes, my bank has a mobile deposit app. Yes, like most banks, they charge a convenience fee for something which is a convenience for them and an inconvenience for you. The tellers are still free, so I make my deposits in person at the bank, where the tellers all know me and personally greet me by name.