If they won't send you that information without a Subject Access Request (Data Protection Act), you should note the Act forces them to fully disclose all personal information that you request, so request the following in printed form:
- every bill for the last 10 years
- every email in your account
- transcripts of all the phone calls they have recorded for "monitoring and training purposes"
it'll still cost you ten pounds, but their processing costs will be in the hundreds if not thousands of pounds, and they have no right to refuse.
I thought paperless billing was a good idea until I stumbled across similar situations. I now try and ensure I keep paper billing as much as possible (or at least have them e-mail me a bill every month where I can back it up myself).
2 years should be a legal minimum for free, open access to bills, because many self employed people only do their accounts once per year and you get nine months in which to complete them.. so that's 12 + 9 == 21 months you have a legitimate need to collect together your records.
I switched to paperless with HSBC and their statements go back 6 years, it was one of the "features" of going paperless. Switching back to paper the 6 years were still there :)
I've switched back and forth between both methods though, but they are good enough to give me free statement prints going back 6 years whenever I request them.
Doing your accounts and collecting together records at a single sitting is more efficient than remembering which provider restricts access to your records at what times and having to collate documents at different times in the year to compensate, IMHO.
Even better though is to just use revert to paper billing to avoid all this BS which I consider even more efficient (for me) than having to log on to services to print out receipts.. or the technique blibble mentions below to request the provider sends you every piece of personal data they have for a single fee ;-)
It is an interesting dilemma really. Should one really try to retain inefficient people as paying customers or will add to customer support and techincal debt later on. Something to think about.
My university charged me £10 to have copies of my exam scripts from summer, and it transpires that there is a maximum of £10* that an organisation can charge to a party who wishes to access archived information. Seems like most of them like abusing this upper limit.
*according to some sort of data-protection legislation, somewhere
TalkTalk are a really crappy company - terrible customer support, crappy broadband routers, and they have a habit of signing you up for things you didn't ask for and bullying you into paying. (This is based on experiences my family and friends have had with them). Avoid at all costs.
Can someone tell me why these companies can't just email pdf's of the bill? Why do I have to fuck about with their shitty systems once a month to get a record?
The reason phone companies will tell you: E-mail isn't secure enough, and they strive to be responsible guardians of your personal data.
The reason phone companies won't tell you: They prefer you to ignore your bill, so you don't think about what you're spending, dispute any mistakes, or scale back your usage if you're going over your bundled minutes.
Yes, this is the real issue. If they would just SEND me the electronic bill, like they used to with the paper one, I wouldn't have this problem.
They way they run this business is like sending me a postcard once a month saying "your paper bill is ready; please drop into our office and pick it up".
- every bill for the last 10 years
- every email in your account
- transcripts of all the phone calls they have recorded for "monitoring and training purposes"
it'll still cost you ten pounds, but their processing costs will be in the hundreds if not thousands of pounds, and they have no right to refuse.