Lots of companies want you to use paperless statements, and all of them talk about how good it is for you. I have yet to see a company talk about their real reason for wanting to use paperless statements — to save them money.

Personally, I want to have the records in my files, rather than relying on some company to keep their servers accessible (sorry, I’ve worked with too many computers to have any confidence in them for this sort of thing). Not to mention the likelihood of them continuing to allow me to access them for several years after closing my account.

This has to be the worst “why paperless statements are good for you” that I’ve seen, though:

Keep your holiday gifts a surprise with Paperless Credit Card Statements.

This holiday season, let [Bank Name] help you keep that special gift a surprise. Sign up for Paperless Credit Card Statements from [Bank Name] and you can rest assured knowing that your monthly statement is stored on our secure web site accessible to you by logging in with your User ID and Password.

In terms of ridiculous commercialization of Christmas, that ranks just above the “Happy Holidays from your SSL certificate company, here are some special holiday deals just for you” that I got last night.