You purchase an item on Credit you're entering into an agreement to pay for something they are going to want to know your billing address so that they can verify payment.
Wrong. I've already entered into that agreement with my credit card company. If I default on that agreement it's the credit card company that's out the money, not Best Buy. Best Buy has no need to know my address other than wanting to market me useless crap that I don't want or need.
Credit reporting agencies may have updated information on your whereabouts
I went out of my way to make sure that my physical address isn't on my credit report when I moved. Converted everything to a PO box. Downside is that I can't apply for new credit with anyone who wants a physical address but I've already got all the credit cards I need so this isn't really a big deal.
It's pretty easy for the merchant, BestBuy whoever, to get your name and address from it.
Thanks for helping me justify to myself why paying the post office $52/yr for the privilege of not having my mail delivered is still a worthwhile expense.....
Although you clearly have it far more together than most, it sounds like if your house goes up in flames you still might be calling up banks for records.
Actually no, I have offsite backups. I suspect that most people don't have that much foresight but keeping a fire safe is a reasonable alternative and not rocket science.
If nothing else, it's good customer service.
TFA refers to people whom stopped doing business with the company. Why should they keep providing you a service that presumably costs them some amount of money if you are no longer a customer? I'd agree that it's bullshit if you can't access your last bill when you leave (personally I wouldn't pay it unless I could get a copy of the bill) but losing access to the archives after ceasing to be a customer doesn't seem particularly burdensome to me.
but in the UK over the last few years the typical behaviour of banks has been to progressively degrade the interest rates paid/charged to existing account holders to derisory levels
I bolded the part of your statement that's the problem. Don't they have credit unions in the UK? I've had much more success doing business with credit unions than banks. You might want to look into it and see if there's one you can join.
but in the UK over the last few years the typical behaviour of banks has been to progressively degrade the interest rates paid/charged to existing account holders to derisory levels
That's not typical on this side of the pond. What is typical is ever increasing fees and ways to entrap your customers into paying those fees. As a random example, most banks over here will pay the largest items first, i.e: if you have four transactions on the same day for $300, $100, $20 and $10 they'll pay them in that order. The net result of that is that if you only had $350 in your account you just generated three overdraft fees at $20-$35 a pop.
My credit union does the exact opposite. It would have paid them in the opposite order: $10, $20, $100 and $300. Starting with a balance of $350 you only would have bounced the last transaction. Credit unions over here also offer a lot more free services -- free accounts, free billpayer services, free checks, etc, etc, etc. A bank will typically charge for these services or require that you keep some insane amount ($5,000 is typical) on deposit to qualify for a waiver. Of course that $5,000 usually needs to be kept in the lowest yielding account they have......
I loathe banks. Would never go back to doing business with them. If I had no other choice I'd try to find a small town community bank -- but a credit union will always be my first option.
Should we spend money on datacenters, and power grids to handle new-age paperless societies in countries that do not have a negative tree-growth rate?
Well, it's not just about cutting down those trees. It presumably takes energy to transport those trees to the paper mill, energy to convert them into paper, energy to ship that paper to Staples/Office Max/Quill/etc and energy to ship it again to your utility company. Then it takes energy for the utility company to print your bill and mail it to you. Eventually it will get thrown away or recycled -- which also consumes energy. Each step in this process contributes a small but measurable amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.
It would be interesting to see a comparison between this process and the environmental impact (datacenter and the power to run it) of the paperless alternative.
What is a judge going to be more impressed with - the original bill printed out by your supplier, that you have a copy of, that shows you're right... or a pdf you printed up on your computer?
If that PDF came off their website I should think it wouldn't make a difference. Are you really telling me that the PDF copy of my bank statement that's exactly the same as the dead tree version isn't as good?
Your a brave man. Personally I don't trust anybody enough to allow that. I don't mind electronic payments but I want to be pushing the money out of my account (i.e: through my credit union's billpayer service) and not having it pulled out of my account by a third-party.
The handful of companies that refuse to bill me all get credit cards. I won't let them go near my checking account. At least that way if they screw up and bill me the wrong amount I don't have to worry about checks bouncing. A credit card charge is also a hell of a lot easier to dispute (in the US anyway) than a EFT debit.
but if we are talking Verizon?, it would be hard to come up with a more dishonest, greedy, evil, self serving, mean spirited, and arrogant company anywhere on this planet
That's easy. AT&T.
Err, I'm sorry, it's at&t now. It's lowercase so it must be less threatening!
To pull the plug the millisecond the account ends - even to the extent that some people are unable to ever view their final statement is simply shoddy, inconsiderate service.
Yeah it is, but I suspect they'd be happy to send you a paper copy if you tell them you can't access the electronic version. Especially if you tell them that you aren't going to pay it until you actually have a bill.
many industries - especially banks - have consciously chosen a business model that encourages customer "churn" by, for example, offering significantly more attractive deals to new customers. I'd love to be able to stick to one supplier for years without getting screwed.
Then stick to one supplier. I've had all of my banking at the same credit union for 16 years. At the end of the day you have to decide if having that relationship with one company is more important to you than whatever deal of the month their competitors are running.
It's about transfer of effort and risk from the company billing you to you yourself.
Why is it the companies responsibility to keep your records for you? I use Quicken to track all of my financial data. The new versions will let you attach image/pdf files to transactions. This makes it almost effortless to save copies of all of your bills going as far back as possible. Backing up this data is trivial -- a decent USB flash drive will suffice.
I now know that if I want to disconnect my POTS, I should not bother, because Verizon will likely frak it up.
YMMV but when I canceled POTS and went to dry loop I didn't have any problems. They did make me "cancel" the DSL and "reinstall" it but my downtime was minimal. Maybe I just got lucky.
Instead I should just move to the cheap $4/month plan
Our lifeline plan has gone from $8 to $10 to $15 in the last three years. They've also added a bunch of fees for regional long distance and long distance. By the time you add on the FCC fees and taxes it's over $30/mo PLUS $0.09/ea for your local calls. I'm trying to talk the girlfriend into ditching it and porting the number to my cell phone plan. Fuck Verizon for nickel and diming us to death.
For a price. I just found out that my bank stores bills, balance sheets etc important information only for 18 months
My small town credit union has every single statement I've ever received since 1993 available through their online banking system. They only keep 12 months of transactions online under the various accounts but if you go into eStatements you can see every single one since your account was opened.
Except the OJ isn't empty calories, it's providing nutrition and fiber along with the calories (and the fiber makes you feel full, unlike pop which just makes you feel like going to the bathroom).
That whooshing sound is the point I was trying to make flying right over your head.
A large part of my diet plan was switching to diet pop, 3-4 16oz servings a day adds up to a LOT of empty calories!
So you drink around 48oz - 64oz a day. If you were drinking OJ that would be 679 to 905 calories a day. They aren't "empty" calories like soda but they still wouldn't be good for you unless you were likewise reducing your food intake. Point being that almost anything to excess (veggies might be the exception since most of them have almost no calories) is bad for you, so why single out soda for an "obesity tax"?
Personally I don't drink any kind of soda any longer. I will have a glass of fruit juice each day for the nutritional value (and because I always seem to crave OJ in the morning) but for the rest of the day I'm drinking plain old H2O. It's free from a monetary standpoint and a calorie one. Diet soda has always tasted absolutely horrible to me -- but to each their own I suppose.
Iced tea is another favorite of mine but I'm always too lazy to make it at home and usually wind up defaulting to water. I order it a lot when I go out though if they have it fresh brewed.
Mars Bars are fattening and are prohibited in the People's Republic of California.
I know you were just going for a +5 funny but here in the People's Republic of New York our Governor wants to impose an "obesity tax" on soft drinks. No, I'm not making this up either.
Why just target soft drinks? Orange juice actually has more calories per fl oz than coca-cola does. Should we tax OJ too? Anything consumed without moderation is bad for you. How do you purpose to use tax policy to teach moderation?
Seems to me like it's just another revenue grab under the guise of being for the public benefit.
It's a bit hypocritical for you to be holding this up as a good thing only one paragraph away from deriding the government.
I didn't hold it up as a good thing. I was merely pointing out that the argument that you can't switch jobs because of pre-existing conditions is incorrect. That mandate actually increased the cost of health insurance. Whether or not the benefits of that mandate were worth the increased cost is an exercise for the reader to decide.
You lost freedom by not having a government provide healthcare.
Did I also lose freedom by not having a government provide me with free housing?
Sometimes you have to give up a freedom to gain another. This isn't all black and white.
But what if I don't want to give up that freedom? What if I want the freedom to live my life as I see fit with as little governmental interference as possible? Why should the government tell me how to live if I'm doing anything to harm my neighbors?
Here in New York State, Governor Paterson wants to impose an "obesity tax" on non-diet soft drinks. Why is this a role for Government? Leaving aside the fact that there's nothing wrong with consuming soda in moderation, why should it be the role of the Government to try and legislate behavior? One of the arguments used to justify polices like this is the increased health care costs of obesity. Where does it end? Is the Government going to outlaw or tax skydiving because of the risks involved? Drinking? McDonalds?
Instead, you are struggling day to day WITHOUT government food or housing, either unemployed or not making enough anyway.
Lots of people are struggling. I've struggled for years. Part of that is due to choices I've made (not finishing my 4yr degree) and part of is due to events beyond my control (being born in area that has been economically depressed since the 70s). That doesn't mean I think it's the role of the Government to take money away from someone who isn't struggling in order to make my life easier. You apparently disagree.
Slashdot Mirror
I just really wish they wouldn't spraypaint swastikas on my furniture.
That rug really tied the room together.....
You purchase an item on Credit you're entering into an agreement to pay for something they are going to want to know your billing address so that they can verify payment.
Wrong. I've already entered into that agreement with my credit card company. If I default on that agreement it's the credit card company that's out the money, not Best Buy. Best Buy has no need to know my address other than wanting to market me useless crap that I don't want or need.
Credit reporting agencies may have updated information on your whereabouts
I went out of my way to make sure that my physical address isn't on my credit report when I moved. Converted everything to a PO box. Downside is that I can't apply for new credit with anyone who wants a physical address but I've already got all the credit cards I need so this isn't really a big deal.
My phone number isn't on my credit report either.
Plus, if anybody steals them, you're screwed!
Yeah but then I get to try out this cool new taser that I just bought ;)
but cannot refuse any legal tender as settlement of a debt.
Then why does my local gas station refuse $50/$100 bills after I've filled my tank? Do they expect me to suck the gas back out for them?
Oxymoron.
That's not true. Congress does act. All the time. On really important stuff.
It's pretty easy for the merchant, BestBuy whoever, to get your name and address from it.
Thanks for helping me justify to myself why paying the post office $52/yr for the privilege of not having my mail delivered is still a worthwhile expense.....
Although you clearly have it far more together than most, it sounds like if your house goes up in flames you still might be calling up banks for records.
Actually no, I have offsite backups. I suspect that most people don't have that much foresight but keeping a fire safe is a reasonable alternative and not rocket science.
If nothing else, it's good customer service.
TFA refers to people whom stopped doing business with the company. Why should they keep providing you a service that presumably costs them some amount of money if you are no longer a customer? I'd agree that it's bullshit if you can't access your last bill when you leave (personally I wouldn't pay it unless I could get a copy of the bill) but losing access to the archives after ceasing to be a customer doesn't seem particularly burdensome to me.
but in the UK over the last few years the typical behaviour of banks has been to progressively degrade the interest rates paid/charged to existing account holders to derisory levels
I bolded the part of your statement that's the problem. Don't they have credit unions in the UK? I've had much more success doing business with credit unions than banks. You might want to look into it and see if there's one you can join.
but in the UK over the last few years the typical behaviour of banks has been to progressively degrade the interest rates paid/charged to existing account holders to derisory levels
That's not typical on this side of the pond. What is typical is ever increasing fees and ways to entrap your customers into paying those fees. As a random example, most banks over here will pay the largest items first, i.e: if you have four transactions on the same day for $300, $100, $20 and $10 they'll pay them in that order. The net result of that is that if you only had $350 in your account you just generated three overdraft fees at $20-$35 a pop.
My credit union does the exact opposite. It would have paid them in the opposite order: $10, $20, $100 and $300. Starting with a balance of $350 you only would have bounced the last transaction. Credit unions over here also offer a lot more free services -- free accounts, free billpayer services, free checks, etc, etc, etc. A bank will typically charge for these services or require that you keep some insane amount ($5,000 is typical) on deposit to qualify for a waiver. Of course that $5,000 usually needs to be kept in the lowest yielding account they have......
I loathe banks. Would never go back to doing business with them. If I had no other choice I'd try to find a small town community bank -- but a credit union will always be my first option.
Should we spend money on datacenters, and power grids to handle new-age paperless societies in countries that do not have a negative tree-growth rate?
Well, it's not just about cutting down those trees. It presumably takes energy to transport those trees to the paper mill, energy to convert them into paper, energy to ship that paper to Staples/Office Max/Quill/etc and energy to ship it again to your utility company. Then it takes energy for the utility company to print your bill and mail it to you. Eventually it will get thrown away or recycled -- which also consumes energy. Each step in this process contributes a small but measurable amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.
It would be interesting to see a comparison between this process and the environmental impact (datacenter and the power to run it) of the paperless alternative.
What is a judge going to be more impressed with - the original bill printed out by your supplier, that you have a copy of, that shows you're right ... or a pdf you printed up on your computer?
If that PDF came off their website I should think it wouldn't make a difference. Are you really telling me that the PDF copy of my bank statement that's exactly the same as the dead tree version isn't as good?
all my bills are automatically withdrawn
Your a brave man. Personally I don't trust anybody enough to allow that. I don't mind electronic payments but I want to be pushing the money out of my account (i.e: through my credit union's billpayer service) and not having it pulled out of my account by a third-party.
The handful of companies that refuse to bill me all get credit cards. I won't let them go near my checking account. At least that way if they screw up and bill me the wrong amount I don't have to worry about checks bouncing. A credit card charge is also a hell of a lot easier to dispute (in the US anyway) than a EFT debit.
but if we are talking Verizon?, it would be hard to come up with a more dishonest, greedy, evil, self serving, mean spirited, and arrogant company anywhere on this planet
That's easy. AT&T.
Err, I'm sorry, it's at&t now. It's lowercase so it must be less threatening!
To pull the plug the millisecond the account ends - even to the extent that some people are unable to ever view their final statement is simply shoddy, inconsiderate service.
Yeah it is, but I suspect they'd be happy to send you a paper copy if you tell them you can't access the electronic version. Especially if you tell them that you aren't going to pay it until you actually have a bill.
many industries - especially banks - have consciously chosen a business model that encourages customer "churn" by, for example, offering significantly more attractive deals to new customers. I'd love to be able to stick to one supplier for years without getting screwed.
Then stick to one supplier. I've had all of my banking at the same credit union for 16 years. At the end of the day you have to decide if having that relationship with one company is more important to you than whatever deal of the month their competitors are running.
It's about transfer of effort and risk from the company billing you to you yourself.
Why is it the companies responsibility to keep your records for you? I use Quicken to track all of my financial data. The new versions will let you attach image/pdf files to transactions. This makes it almost effortless to save copies of all of your bills going as far back as possible. Backing up this data is trivial -- a decent USB flash drive will suffice.
I now know that if I want to disconnect my POTS, I should not bother, because Verizon will likely frak it up.
YMMV but when I canceled POTS and went to dry loop I didn't have any problems. They did make me "cancel" the DSL and "reinstall" it but my downtime was minimal. Maybe I just got lucky.
Instead I should just move to the cheap $4/month plan
Our lifeline plan has gone from $8 to $10 to $15 in the last three years. They've also added a bunch of fees for regional long distance and long distance. By the time you add on the FCC fees and taxes it's over $30/mo PLUS $0.09/ea for your local calls. I'm trying to talk the girlfriend into ditching it and porting the number to my cell phone plan. Fuck Verizon for nickel and diming us to death.
For a price. I just found out that my bank stores bills, balance sheets etc important information only for 18 months
My small town credit union has every single statement I've ever received since 1993 available through their online banking system. They only keep 12 months of transactions online under the various accounts but if you go into eStatements you can see every single one since your account was opened.
Gotta admit that's kinda cool.
Except the OJ isn't empty calories, it's providing nutrition and fiber along with the calories (and the fiber makes you feel full, unlike pop which just makes you feel like going to the bathroom).
That whooshing sound is the point I was trying to make flying right over your head.
A large part of my diet plan was switching to diet pop, 3-4 16oz servings a day adds up to a LOT of empty calories!
So you drink around 48oz - 64oz a day. If you were drinking OJ that would be 679 to 905 calories a day. They aren't "empty" calories like soda but they still wouldn't be good for you unless you were likewise reducing your food intake. Point being that almost anything to excess (veggies might be the exception since most of them have almost no calories) is bad for you, so why single out soda for an "obesity tax"?
Personally I don't drink any kind of soda any longer. I will have a glass of fruit juice each day for the nutritional value (and because I always seem to crave OJ in the morning) but for the rest of the day I'm drinking plain old H2O. It's free from a monetary standpoint and a calorie one. Diet soda has always tasted absolutely horrible to me -- but to each their own I suppose.
Iced tea is another favorite of mine but I'm always too lazy to make it at home and usually wind up defaulting to water. I order it a lot when I go out though if they have it fresh brewed.
Mars Bars are fattening and are prohibited in the People's Republic of California.
I know you were just going for a +5 funny but here in the People's Republic of New York our Governor wants to impose an "obesity tax" on soft drinks. No, I'm not making this up either.
Why just target soft drinks? Orange juice actually has more calories per fl oz than coca-cola does. Should we tax OJ too? Anything consumed without moderation is bad for you. How do you purpose to use tax policy to teach moderation?
Seems to me like it's just another revenue grab under the guise of being for the public benefit.
It's a bit hypocritical for you to be holding this up as a good thing only one paragraph away from deriding the government.
I didn't hold it up as a good thing. I was merely pointing out that the argument that you can't switch jobs because of pre-existing conditions is incorrect. That mandate actually increased the cost of health insurance. Whether or not the benefits of that mandate were worth the increased cost is an exercise for the reader to decide.
You lost freedom by not having a government provide healthcare.
Did I also lose freedom by not having a government provide me with free housing?
Sometimes you have to give up a freedom to gain another. This isn't all black and white.
But what if I don't want to give up that freedom? What if I want the freedom to live my life as I see fit with as little governmental interference as possible? Why should the government tell me how to live if I'm doing anything to harm my neighbors?
Here in New York State, Governor Paterson wants to impose an "obesity tax" on non-diet soft drinks. Why is this a role for Government? Leaving aside the fact that there's nothing wrong with consuming soda in moderation, why should it be the role of the Government to try and legislate behavior? One of the arguments used to justify polices like this is the increased health care costs of obesity. Where does it end? Is the Government going to outlaw or tax skydiving because of the risks involved? Drinking? McDonalds?
Instead, you are struggling day to day WITHOUT government food or housing, either unemployed or not making enough anyway.
Lots of people are struggling. I've struggled for years. Part of that is due to choices I've made (not finishing my 4yr degree) and part of is due to events beyond my control (being born in area that has been economically depressed since the 70s). That doesn't mean I think it's the role of the Government to take money away from someone who isn't struggling in order to make my life easier. You apparently disagree.
Obviously it's hard for those types to get rich if taxes on income over..say.. 1 million a year are in the 80%+ bracket.
So basically you've decided how much money people should be allowed to make, after which you intend to seize the lions share of their earnings?
The knowledge we currently have of physics
Fixed that for you.
to switch jobs and go bankrupt with COBRA
If he switched jobs and the new job had a group plan they wouldn't be able to exclude that pre-existing condition.