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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Business Practice Pet Peeve

For no particular reason I was thinking about a business practice that really gets under my skin. What is it? Well have you had a company try to encourage you to use paperless billing by claiming that it's good for the environment, saves paper, etc? Actually it's mainly just good for the company, as processing an electronic transaction is significantly cheaper than paying someone to manually enter the transaction based on a paper check and invoice/bill. I'm fine with companies being more efficient, but I have to really benefit from that efficiency, and an environmental snow-job isn't a benefit (besides, I recycle most of the paper I receive in the mail anyway).

Despite the fact that I'm a fairly technology-savy guy I pay 90+% of my bills via check and USPS. Why not? I get the benefit of the float in my checking account, and besides, most of the businesses that push paperless billing don't actually pass any of those paperless billing savings on to us.

Of course the worst offense in the category occurs when some businesses actually charge you more for a paper bill. Sirius satellite radio does this, and it really pisses me off.

Want me to go paperless billing? Then the business needs to share the wealth a little and take a buck or two off my bill.

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