Re: What if People Don't Take the Bait to Go Paperless? [Telecom]

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:17:35 -0400 Monty Solomon gave us snippets from a NY Times article:

In August, T-Mobile got serious about paperless billing. It started > charging a $1.50 monthly fee on all accounts that continued to > receive a paper bill. > > Large companies would love to use paperless billing rather than the > mail: it reduces their costs and at the same time allows chest > thumping about being green. But offering their customers positive > sweeteners hasn't been very effective. T-Mobile tried another tack: a > stick instead of a carrot. What woe it brought upon itself, however, > when it told customers it was time to switch or pay up.

First, let me preface this by saying that I've been with T-Mobile (or its predecessor VoiceStream) for 9+ years and on the whole I've been very pleased with the offering of service as well as their customer care.

I was not pleased when I heard that they were going to mandate a fee for receiving paper bills I complained loudly to customer care. Didn't matter they were poised to charge "$3.49" for me to receive a detailed bill. I did not give in and I was determined that if push came to shove that I would pay the $3.50 for paper detailed billing. Not because I have spare $3.50 to pad T-Mobile's bottom line, but just being totally frustrated trying to get the information that was on my paper bills on line. Whoever designed their web access needs to do it over again. The present interface is really krappy.

If T-Mobile made some action like giving us a credit for not using paper billing that would be acceptible. Just forcing people to do it or else is heavy-handed since we can see the only reason they're doing it is to feed their bottom line. It's not to be environmentally conscious.