Paperless Transactions... Thanks For Nothing?

I'm sure all of my readers are aware that the newest rage in billing is to go 'paperless.' Credit card bills, cell phone bills, cable bills, Bill bills... have all started asking their customers to go 'paperless' and pay their bills online. Why would they do this? Are Americans so in love with new technologies that we'll change an entire history of papered business transactions just because we can do it a new way now? Or is a paperless transaction so much more convenient that we all can't be bothered to receive something in a mail... "too much work!"?

Well, I have a theory on paperless transactions which is two-fold, cynical, and subversively angry (like almost anything I say or think):

1) Paperless transactions cost less money. Oh not for you. No no no... who cares about you? The consumer? Paperless transactions cost less money to the company. They don't have to buy paper, they don't have to pay postage to send (and return) your bills, they don't have to pay illegal immigrants to mis-appropriate the funds you send so that your bill is twice as large the next month because they put your money in someone else's account. Add all these little costs together for tens of thousands of customers every month, and you've got yourself a huge dollar amount saved by subtly forcing your customers to go paperless. Do they pass that savings onto you, the consumer? How naive are you? Of course they don't... that savings goes directly into the pocket of whatever Vice President headed up the 'paperless transaction initiative.'

2) Paperless transactions leave no paper trail to save yourself if you're screwed over. This is the main reason I will never switch. Let's say I go paperless and pay my bills online... what's to say my credit card bill won't be bigger than it should be? Even with an itemized list of charges online, not having something physically in my hands makes me nervous. Besides, how often do people skim stuff online where they would actually read something that they're holding? I mean, put more simply, if you go paperless for convenience sake, won't you eventually get to the point where you just pay it without really looking at what you're doing? Isn't that the whole point for the consumer to be able to pay their bills in five seconds? Are you looking at what they're charging you or are you just moving electronic funds from your online bank to your online bills... with no way to prove you sent the transaction electronically in the first place? If I say I transferred funds and they say I didn't, how do I prove I'm right? No, my dear people inside the internets, paperless transactions will never be done by this young blogger.