post no e-bill

Lately some of the telcos and utilities companies are offering e-bill to customers in a move towards going green and paperless.

My advice is, don't opt in.

I opted in, and realized that after that I will have to pay a fee for every bill I request them to send to my address. Doesn't make sense, you opt in, they don't give you rebate or discount or reward, but if you want them to do something they have been doing all this while, ie sending you the bill in an envelope with their logo, they charge you a fee.

Then they may argue, you are doing this for the environment. So? Does that mean you have to charge the customer for the bill request? If you care so much about the environment, why don't you allocate a portion of your revenues to save the environment? Oh, so you need to answer to your shareholders. Don't you have to answer to your customers?

Compare cust A and cust B. A goes for e-bill while B still sticks to paper bill. Let's say they charge $1 per bill. In 12 month's time B would have gotten $12 of "value-added service". And remember, once you opted out of paper bill, there is no (way of) going back (unless you pay).

If you want to charge for bill request, at least give some rebates for those who go paperless. Tsk tsk, only know how to take, don't know how to give.