A " Paperless " World !

When the wonderful age of the computer dawned we were promised that we were on the brink of a " paperless "  world.   Somehow it didn't work out that way, but the custom of getting household bills arriving in a printed paper format through the mail is fast coming to an end.

The energy companies that supply us with electricity and gas have announced that they will impose a new charge to compensate them for the cost of printing paper bills and paying the post office that new one dollar charge for each letter delivered through the post.   This surcharge will be $ 1.69 added to each bill, costing households that get quarterly bills an extra $ 6.76 a year - and a whopping $ 21 for those who need to be billed monthly.

Customers can avoid this impost by agreeing to receive their energy bills via email to their computer or smartphone, but that opens up a new set of problems when it comes to paying the bill.   Many people are in the habit of paying bills at the post office, but now such payments will incur an additional fee of two dollars per bill to compensate the energy company for the commission the post office charges them for this service.

Just to complicate things, there are problems for customers who settle their bills by using Visa or Mastercard.    These credit card companies impose a small fee on the merchants who use their services, hence those who proffer one of these cards can expect another surcharge - this time a $ 1.91 credit card fee.

All those fees will cause distress to those not hooked up to the Internet and who regard electronics as a mystery.  Exemptions will be granted to pensioners, concession card holders and those on hardship programmes, but the broad spectrum of energy customers will have no option other than to switch to email billing - or accept higher energy bills.

All this is part of an emerging pattern.  In the distant past commerce worked on the custom of providers billing our purchases on a monthly basis - and allowing us thirty days to settle the bill.  In some cases, we were even offered a small discount if we settled in seven days, and usually payment was by either cash or a cheque.  Many people were notorious for not paying on time, necessitating costly follow-up billing.

Today's world is marching towards a regimen that requires automatic settlement of bills by the bank serving the customer.   That is fast becoming the only way that services like mobile phones, cable television entertainment, car purchase repayments and a host of other periodic payments will be accepted.   If insufficient funds in the customers account cause the payment to be missed, heavy automatic penalties apply.   We can expect that requirement of automatic payments to extend to all aspects of trade as the condition of supply.

Accounts that are still billed monthly usually have a payment deadline and if this is missed an automatic penalty applies - and this is usually around fifteen or twenty dollars added to the next bill.
The days of vast hordes of clerical workers processing payment details has given way to all that information being collated in the cloud - and accessed by the tap of a key or the click of a mouse.

We may never fully attain a paperless society, but certainly the days of bills in the mail is fast coming to an end !