The disadvantage of going electronic for you bills and statements

Today I needed to pull up the last pay slip from my old company. The company in question doesn’t offer the benefit of mailing out payslips, only the ability to view them online. For some dumb reason, like maybe the possibility that you might have to document your pay and contributions to the IRS I figured that i would have access to these records for a reasonable period of time say 2-5 years, but today a few months after leaving the company I get this message…..

Fortunately after my years of dealing with the USCIS I decided to print a copy of my pay slips so I am 99% sure I have the payslip I need at home.

I also noticed a similar thing when I closed a credit card, all of a suddenly you loose access to the online records, the same thing also happened when I closed a bank account.

This whole save the environment go to e-statements and e-bills is just an excuse for the company in question to save on printing and mailing costs. If they really wanted to save the environment they would allow you to access the records for 5 years after closing the account, that way you don’t have to print at your own expense copies of the statements.

So make sure you have copies of all your bank statements, bills, pay slips before you terminate your relationship with a company because you are more than likely going to be loosing access to the online versions of those documents as well.

2 Responses to “The disadvantage of going electronic for you bills and statements”

  1. AJ says:

    Print them to file using a PDF printer…

  2. Ian says:

    Or they could just give me access to the data for 5 years, then I wouldn’t have to keep copies for my personal records. Plus have you ever seen a warning message when you close an account saying “WARNING YOU WILL LOOSE ACCESSS TO ALL YOUR ONLINE STATEMENTS WHEN YOU CLOSE THIS ACCOUNT”?