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I'm no Internet novice. I can't afford to be.
As a telecommuter and reporter, the Internet plays a daily role in my life. In my 9-to-5 world, I use it to fetch my e-mails, keep in touch with co-workers, check the wires for breaking news, and research the companies and technologies about which I write.
On my personal time, the Internet is a way to communicate with friends and family around the world. And of course, there's e-commerce. I regularly shop online, buying books and CDs from Amazon.com, food and toys for my parrot and jeans from the website of my favorite retailer.
Obviously, I have no problem spending my money online. But paying off bills on the Internet is another story. I just don't know if I can make that leap.
Electronic bill presentation and payment (EBPP) is expected to save the telecom industry alone about $23 billion by 2005, according to "Telcos & EBPP: When It Comes to Making Money," a study released by Killen & Associates, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based market research and consulting firm. The savings come from moving customers from paper billing and customer service representatives (CSRs) who answer a phone to an Internet-based system.
Next year, only about 9 percent of telecom companies' business and consumer customers will receive their bills electronically and 15 percent will actually pay online. Within five years, there will be a dramatic change. The Killen study predicts 70 percent of customers will access their bills over the Internet, and 80 percent will make electronic payments.
I don't know if I'll be in that majority ... mainly because I'm a creature of habit and a Type-A personality when it comes to managing my money. My father, who was a banker, taught me in my early teens how to write checks and balance my checkbook without the help of sophisticated computer programs. I also purposely established my accounts at a small local bank that doesn't push electronic account management.
When it comes time to pay, I get a lot of satisfaction whittling down the stack of monthly bills as I write checks, seal them in the envelope, lick the stamp and drop them in the mailbox. I even write checks at the grocery store, rather than using a debit card as most of my contemporaries do.
Why go to all the trouble of lugging around my checkbook, writing a check and recording it? That's easy, it's more difficult to spend money that way, and I'm less likely to lose track of what I spent (as well as losing track of those debit card receipts I'd need to note in my checking account ledger).
With EBPP, I feel as if I'd lose control of my expenses. What if I never received notification that my e-bill was due because my computer was broken or I didn't have time to access my Internet account? Or what if I forgot to subtract the electronic payment for my telephone or cable bill? I could be at risk of past due fees or overdrafting my account. In the long run, that could cost me even more.
From the offerings I've seen from a variety of telecom companies, EBPP is a convenient, easy way for customers to manage telephone bills. But for now, I prefer to do things the old-fashioned way.
