I bought my iPhone back in November, which was the last month I would have a Sprint bill.

So I thought.

Since December, every month like clockwork I get a multipage statement in the mail letting me know I have a credit for $1.24.

If we assume it costs, conservatively, $0.50 to send that bill, they’ve already spent almost twice what they owe me to let me know about the credit.

In other billing news, our newest insurance provider, Guardian, has informed my insurance broker that we haven’t paid our last two bills. As someone who is incredibly anal-retentive about paying bills I can explain: we haven’t gotten any.

And, in order to sign up to pay your bill online, you have to have information that is only sent with the paper bill, which I haven’t received.

(sigh)

Is it any wonder that the adoption of paperless billing has stalled? If we can’t trust our suppliers to deal with paper bills correctly, why would we trust them to do it electronically? With the huge penalties for missing, say, a credit card payment by even by one day, entering into an agreement to only get an electronic reminder can be a bit scary.

I wish they would adopt the process my eye doctor uses to verify appointments. Two days before the appointment they send out an e-mail. In the e-mail is a link to confirm or reschedule the appointment. If you don’t click on it, they call you the next day.

If Citibank or Chase would implement a system where they would send a paperless statement (or let you know that it is ready) and if you didn’t verify receipt within a certain period of time they’d send out the paper statement, I’d sign up in a heartbeat. Technologically it wouldn’t be hard to implement.

Can you tell I’m a little overwhelmed with paperwork lately? As OpenNMS has grown I’ve had to spend more and more time with administrative tasks than playing with software. I’m not sure I like it.

At least I got to help a client figure out a notification issue that was giving him trouble yesterday, and a lot of it is dealing with new business, which is always great, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.