Paperless billing

pencekeeper

It's annual electricity/gas review time for me, and I'm currently on Npower SOL14 for both (£450 a year approx).

It looks like Npower SOL17 (Electricity) & Go Fix (Gas) would save me around £38 a year which isn't huge but worth it.

However, both tarriffs are paperless, and I've always tried to avoid this. Why? Well, it's a bit sad to admit but I like getting paper bills that I can file away and analyse to my heart's content whenever I need. I have contacted Npower but they've said there's no way to receive paper bills with these.

I suppose the alternative is to print out the online bills and file them away, but I've been reluctant to do this up till now. That said, I'm getting the impression this is the way virtually all tarriffs will become, so maybe I should just get used to it now?

Viper_7

You can usually see you previous bills on line for about 2 years - certainly can with Npower.

You don't need to print anything out. Npower lets you save them in PDF format if you really want to keep a copy locally.

With the price of postage on the increase AGAIN yes, I'm sure that the optional paperless billing will become more less optional and will become the norm.

MoneySavingNovice

It’s a personal view, but I actually like Paper-less billing, bank accounts and the like.

I find that being able to file the bill on the computer, and using a spreadsheet to track the expenditure easier to deal with than building up huge piles of old bills.

I have bills, bank statements and the like going back to 2001 which don’t take up any room (aside from some space on my PC hard-disk)

The other up-side is that we are not wasting as much paper, printing and energy transporting paper around the country which can now be downloaded. For me the only real down-side is the effect that this is having on the Post Office.

It’s a personal thing, and I guess it’s what works best for you - but I think over the next few years it’s going to be more usual to have Paper-less billing, and in time very unusual to get a paper bill - I guess that you may have to get used to it!

pencekeeper

MoneySavingNovice wrote: »

I guess that you may have to get used to it!

Yes I think you're right. I think it's just that I like keeping the bills in nice neat orderly files that gives me an anal sense of satisfaction (erm, hopefully you know what I meant there).

I don't really like having to manage these bills online and I'll need to ensure I keep the historical info beyond 2 years - but I guess all of us have to adapt.


The semi-ironic thing is that I work in IT :P