Online Banking, the Niche Realm of Graph Pr0n and Paperless Billing: A Tenuous Link

Last night I was on my online banking site trying to find out just where all my paper get to by the end of the month.

My online banking offers me two “worlds”. One, a "blue" world, and the other, a "multicoloured" world. Up until last night I had only ever experienced the monochrome delights of the blue world, but as my better half had recently had to cut-and-paste a load of data from their website to excel in order to analyse our spending I thought I’d check out the multicoloured world and see if the blue world had been holding out on that good shit.

Immediately I came across, and was delighted to find the “Reports” section. This truly filled me with anticipation of what could potentially exist in this new, wondrous place.

Ladies and Gentlemen, steel your bad selves. First I will show you the old, stale blue world (sucks doesn’t it?):

Now, prepare. I present to you the new, improved, psychedelically-hued world that is, Reporting.

Kinda. Well. It sucks, doesn’t it?

A quick* call to their Call Centre ensued which resulted only in disappointment. The very friendly call centre MASP/CSP/Agent knew immediately that there was no option to export data from their website (which surprised me as I thought it wouldn't be a particularly common question - hell, maybe they were just good at their job), but checked with their specialist team just to be certain. Sure enough, the specialists could only suggest I copy and paste what I was after (and dick about in excel for a few eons removing assorted spiel, although they didn't specifically say this).

*After going through increasing levels of security tighter than those which George Bush would have to endure to go to DEFCON 1.

It should also be pointed out that the website in question didn’t quite display correctly using Firefox. This annoys me.

So, having resigned myself to a new level of geekery by this point, I thought I’d try my personal bank account out of interest just to see what options they offer. Sure enough, they had a really straight-forward, purpose-built export utility. I could choose to export directly to Excel and had the option to opt for Sage or MS Money.

The Excel export worked a treat and I got to see just where all my dollars get to each month.

The only disappointment was that I could only access reports going back approximately six weeks (This kind of sucked, and brings me *neatly* to my next point).

This highlights why paperless billing etc. ain’t as cool as I idealistically wish it were. You become reliant on someone else’s servers to securely retain and serve the data you’re after, whereas before the responsibility lay solely with you. For the less anal among us this is probably of little concern, but for a chronic filer-of-things-potentially-important-at-some-point-in-the-future, this results in a feeling of helplessness and creeping paranoia. Also, from a company’s point of view, paper billing is often used when resolving disputed transactions. Company's always ask for evidence that they surely have themselves on file. Online services enabling customers to print their own bills surely increases the chances of people attempting fraud in ways they couldn't previously (and remember attempted fraud still costs money. Someone's got to investigate it) Example:

From a customer’s perspective paperless billing is great. You don’t have to take responsibility for your own paperwork – the company in question takes care of this. You help the environment. You make life easier for your postman (and an over-stretched Royal Mail). You can access your bills etc. at any time from anywhere. It’s all good. Isn’t it?

Well, the above points are all valid. Imagine how many tons of paper and energy could be saved if nPower, British Gas and Scottish Power all stopped sending out paper bills tomorrow. Plus, not having to meticulously file every bill, invoice and receipt this modern life of ours effortlessly creates would be really cool for us customers.*

*And ultimately taking filing and household cleric duties too seriously seldom pays dividends. The one time you're going to need all those receipts is when your house burns down - taking your Ikea-furnished home office and all those precious documents with it.

However, there is a downside to "going paperless". It isn't a one-way street. Your energy supplier, for instance, is not only responsible for looking after all your bills, it also means that if they really screw up big style it's quite possible that you won't have a hope in hell of disputing that £600 electricity bill you alegedy ran up last April. Plus, you're less likely to check your bills (or at least I am) if they aren't physically dumped on your doormat each month and 'They' won't e-mail you your bill as it's considered a security risk. They will however e-mail you a notification that your latest bill is available online. But, seriously now, how bad have things got when you log onto googlemail and, on seeing a message from npower immediately race off to their website, log on and see just how you spent £109.56 last month?

I think paperless billing is a great idea. I support it without a doubt. I'm not a raging environmentalist, I just hate waste and inefficiency wherever I see it.

I do however believe that the terms and conditions we as customers agree to need to be updated to meet the needs of the ever changing economic climate. At present, the T&Cs we all agree to (and don't even read) are geared toward protecting the company. This is fair enough. Almost all the time 'they' are taking a chance on you, and even if it's a tiny chance, it's still a chance. You apply for a credit card, sign a 12 month contract for cable TV or whatever, sign to say that you swear on your crossed heart that you can be trusted to use a load of electricity and then pay for it all at the end of the quarter. The companies are the ones taking the gamble on us consumers. They have no idea who we are. We know exactly who they are and can go and tell BBC's Watchdog all about them if they upset us. They can't go and tell your boss or colleagues that your subscription to Playboy TV is 4 months in arrears.

I'll draw away from that galloping tangent now and round this off. Ts&Cs (for paperless billing) need to address the fact that we are now, in effect, paying a company for data storage in addition to whatever service or product they provide us. Your gas supplier is making a promise to keep not only your personal data (which is another story) but your account history out of the public domain, safe from hackers, yet always readily accessible to those authorised to see it.

When I agreed to "go paperless" I didn't think of the implications for one minute (and in all honesty have never quite been able to muster up the effort to care too much about my energy bills) I just thought about the environment (and not so much the 50p discount they offered me), but it got me thinking about the push towards paperless billing that is slowly gathering momentum.*

And on this note I'm surprised how slowly companies are adopting paperless billing as the cost savings are no doubt enormous. Perhaps it isn't just a lethargic approach, perhaps it's that they are actually giving serious consideration to just how much of a vast commitment paperless billing actually is?

*Since "going paperless" with both my energy and broadband supplier, they have both continued to send me paper bills each month, although they are honouring their commitment to the 50p paperless discount.