Deef's Net

This is another in an occasional series of commentaries on various companies’ attempts to get me to give up the security of paper statements so that they can save money on postage and printing.

First it was the ability to hide your Christmas purchases from your spouse (who presumably doesn’t have your password to look at online statements, but would pore over your credit card statement if it came in the mail, looking for that one Amazon.com purchase that stood out).

Then they offered to plant a tree, which would make you feel better about all those poor, defenseless trees you killed by not switching to paperless statements earlier.

Then, shock of shocks, they offered a $5 statement credit (just once, I checked) if you switched to paperless statements. They clearly weren’t looking at my monthly totals when they came up with that offer.

But now, they’re really raising the stakes. If you switch to paperless statements by such and such a date, you’ll be entered to win one of three MINI Cooper cars, 3 outdoor adventures, 5 kitchen appliances, 10 bicycles, and 100 gift certificates for $100 to a store I’ve never heard of.

“It’s Time to Go Paperless. It’s the smart thing to do.”

Assuming I never get audited, or have a dispute over a bill. Until I’m offered a satisfactory solution for what would happen if the bank were to go out of business tomorrow, and six years down the road I have to produce a statement for the IRS, I’m not interested.

I’d also like to see some admission that they’re doing this solely out of their own interests, rather than making up excuses (or lying outright) about it being better for me. This one comes close (why else would they be spending all this money on prizes if they didn’t stand to gain a lot more?), but no cigar yet.

(Also, regarding the whole “smart” thing. This is also the bank that sends me an E-Mail every month telling me about how great it would be if I paid my bill online, apparently without noticing that I do.)

This one irks me. I can understand that religious people want to portray themselves as servants rather than masters, but remember that "webmaster" means "master of the web site." Changing "master" to "servant" in this case doesn't get you any spiritual brownie points.

I guess it strikes me as false humility (besides being misguided). I have the same reaction when I hear of a student group's leadership team renaming itself to be called a "servant team" instead. There's no shame in being leaders (see 1 Tim 3:1). Yes, Christianity is not about lording your authority over others, but there's a difference between saying "do this because I'm in charge" and being recognized as a leader in a particular organization or field.

I remain amazed at how major ISPs and E-Mail providers can use spam filters that are so (to put it far more nicely than I’d like) primitive. Over the past week or two, the biggest challenge I’ve had business-wise is telling people that previews of their letters are ready for them to view. I send an E-Mail. It gets blocked. They send an E-Mail wondering why they haven’t heard back from me. I can’t very well tell them to add me to their whitelist, because they won’t get it.

So, instead, I have to take advantage of the fact that the filters are so primitive, and work around them to get my message through. But

Somebody tell me the problem with the following:

During the October annual meeting of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni, it was made clear to the members of the newly-elected executive committee that a great many alumni would like to be able to vote on constitutional amendments without having to attend meetings in person.

To respond as quickly as possible to that request, we called a special meeting for February 12 in Hanover. […]

The craze on rebates seems to have mostly died down, I think. There’s at least one exception, though! I just sent in two rebates for cell phones (one for me for $50, one for Christine for $100) that required:

• the dated sales receipt
• a photocopy of the UPC
• an invoice showing our account to be in good standing
• said invoice must be dated between 150 and 180 days of phone activation
• everything mailed and postmarked between 180 and 210 days of activation

If that isn’t a ploy to have as many people as possible not get their rebates, I don’t know what is. I put everything aside (except

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”

A while ago, I gave up on most E-Mail programs’ built-in filtering, and made up my own hodgepodge of technologies, which are doing a remarkably good job. Every now and then, some new spam variation will come out and I’ll get a few that make it to my Inbox, but it’s filtering nearly 100% (well over 99%) of them without any active maintenance on my part (yay cron!).

Every now and then, I look at my “Black” folder, usually when people tell me that they’ve sent an E-Mail that I haven’t received (not that I’ve ever had a false positive, but there’s always a first time for everything), and am increasingly amazed at the obscenities that can be

I’m having a look at Dell’s web site to see if the $2,000 laptop I want to get is still about $1,800 more than I can afford, and came across this little bit of confusion.

Dell currently offers small businesses four types of warranty programs. The most basic is pretty clear — you mail them your computer, do without it for some unstated period of time, and they’ll mail it back to you, hopefully in a fixed condition. If not, you can mail it back to them again.

I really can’t tell the difference between the next two options, except that one costs $150 more than the other:

• get enhanced protection for your new notebook, including