British Gas moved me to paperless bills without my consent

Eldi_Dos

Almost 100% of paper and cardboard that come into this house is recycled,only documents I want to keep get kept, the council sells on all the paper and cardboard collected and gets good price for it helping council balance sheet and the local economy.
Servers thousands of miles away add nothing to local economy and to say they are better for the environment is debatable.

macman

But those servers will still exist whether you are on paper or online billing, it makes no difference.
I didn't actually say that companies push online billing because it's greener. I said they do it because it's vastly cheaper. If they can put some greenwash on the process to help promote it, then of course they will.
Even recycled paper still uses vast amounts of energy to re-pulp it, clean it and dry it after manufacture. Up to 54,000 litres per tonne. 

Eldi_Dos

If the bills were generated here why not have the servers here, and hopefully powered by greener electricity.

triade

Eldi_Dos said:

If the bills were generated here why not have the servers here, and hopefully powered by greener electricity.

Because sending an email requires an email service which could be handled anywhere, I have no idea where my emails are stored. BG don't handle that entire process, not necessarily saying it costs a lot, just that when an email is sent and when accessing a website, a lot of different servers in a lot of different places are involved. With a mail out, I imagine it would involve one office in the Midlands somewhere and one computer and the printing and mailing process.

_Sam_

triade said:

btw. I know that some might say I should print out the statement if I ever need to prove my address, but I believe me buying a printer and ensuring there is working ink cartridges in it just for this rare circumstance is a false economy and too much hassle. It doesn't make sense to me to try and find a place that does printing either and my friends don't have printers.

If you need to print something occasionally, your local library should have a printer. There is a small charge for it, but couple of pages or so it won't be much.

wild666

Even with paperless billing you can print off a statement that is recent as proof of your address. Anybody asking for proof of address should accept any recent bill with the address on it.

t0rt0ise

wild666 said:

Even with paperless billing you can print off a statement that is recent as proof of your address. Anybody asking for proof of address should accept any recent bill with the address on it.

Usually they don't allow prints from the internet, they have to be the original paper copy. 

EssexHebridean

wild666 said:

Even with paperless billing you can print off a statement that is recent as proof of your address. Anybody asking for proof of address should accept any recent bill with the address on it.

Not for AML purposes you can't - the bill has to be one that is sent in the post, not printed from the internet. 

summer_daze009

Even if you are on paperless billing you can still request a paper one through your online account ifyou want one. They will send it free and within 10 days

Marvel1

MattMattMattUK said:

triade said:

I want to help improve our environment, I want to make that clear upfront.

My energy bills are the only paper bills I get though and the reason is, so I can prove my address.

Every so often we need to apply for something where we need to prove our address, so a recent bill is generally requested.

I have chosen to keep getting my periodical statements through the post and I had not planned to change that.

I got an email from them today telling me I'd been switched to paperless. They didn't ask me first, they just switched it.

I take affront to that so I contacted them and instructed them to change it back.

They told me it had been switched back and I have to take their word for it.

I don't like how they did this so I want to talk about it.

I am not sure what there really is to talk about it, they would not need your permission to switch you over to paperless, only to notify you that they were doing it.

triade said:

btw. I know that some might say I should print out the statement if I ever need to prove my address, but I believe me buying a printer and ensuring there is working ink cartridges in it just for this rare circumstance is a false economy and too much hassle. It doesn't make sense to me to try and find a place that does printing either and my friends don't have printers.

I am more surprised that you still need a bill to prove your address, I thought with the fact that people could knock one up these days in minutes that would have long died. When I recently had to do KYC for a business bank account as a company director the only documents they would accept were passport, driving license and Council Tax bill, utility bills were not on the list. Is a utility bill still valid in any context as a proof of address? 

Some gambling sites request one - within the last 3 month's, along with photo ID.