I consider those to be services too.

And don’t forget one benefit of snailmail – the postal fraud and theft / tampering statues are still more of a deterrent and easier to invoke when the “bad guys” come at you through that channel.

No kidding. The personal digital assistant that people want and need isn’t a gadget in your pocket, it’s a smart human agent who can — in Gibsonian terms — crack the corporate ice and negotiate with those systems on your behalf.

In this case I can’t agree. They /are/ bearing the cost. It is cheaper for them to transact with me electronically. And I was already in that camp, having overcome significant hurdles to get there. Then they accidentally kicked me out, and I’m not inclined to leap over those hurdles again. So their loss, they have to print and mail bills at more expense to themselves.

The real point of all this, of course, is that with a proper identity metasystem in place, and with the ability for me to selectively release information about myself to a new transaction partner with a click, the psychic burden of online registration will be greatly diminished and things will be more frictionless.

We have been waiting a long time for that, and we are waiting still, but we will not wait forever. The problem will be — is being — solved. But indignities like these remind me how bloody sick I am of waiting.

The blame isn’t online registration, it’s willful disrespect of the time and money of customers, citizens, unwashed masses, peons.. (take your pick) by corporations that are so big now that they don’t have to give a damn, and that systematically destroy the ability of their customers and their employees to fix any train wrecks that arise. They’re turning every cost they possibly can into an externality and bearing none of the cost of their negligence.

I work in a massive bureaucratic entity and we have a small army of people whose FULL TIME JOB is to fight with our telecom providers. Yes, fight. Daily. Who aside from megacorps and governments can afford such flagrant waste and inexcusable misallocation of resources?

Well… now with virtual assistants, more and more small businesses will be able to feed overseas parasites to do battle with onshore parasites on their behalf.

To me, that is a sign of a failed system.

Basically, the myth of frictionless transactions is yet another fairy tale from the dotcom era. The business interests of all these corporations are diametrically opposed to frictionless transactions: they want as much friction as possible to make the cost of doing anything (and especially leaving them) so high that most people will just give up. After all, isn’t that in large part what DRM is about? Why should we be surprised that the same mentality pervades all business operations?

Why not put your virtual assistant on the case? :)

Seriously, given the number of SFH (Systems from Hell) the average online person has to deal with, and that “online person” no longer means programmer/alpha geek but soccer/security mom, I think solving issues like this is a huge growing market for micro companies.

Soon perhaps you’ll be able to say, “I’ll have my call center call your call center and work this all out.”

In general I’d rather go paperless, especially for things like bills, but you’re right, we’re in a long transition during which paper and electronic bills will coexist and there’s no sense railing against that.

My point here was that, having gone to the (considerable) effort to sign up for online bill presentment, and then having the option yanked, it was sad that redoing that process seemed so cumbersome that I thought, screw it, just go back to sending paper, even though it’s more expensive for you and less convenient for me.

It’s the friction of supposedly frictionless online transactions that’s wearing me down.

Good for the goose etc….