For those of you who follow Simple Justice regularly, you know that I’m a fan of the environment.  I even have a Prius.  So when I saw that if everyone in American went with paperless bank statements, it would save 18.5 million trees, it caught my interest.

Not because I want everyone to go paperless, but because I realized how problematic such pleas will be.  I say this because of my recent experience with Citibank.  You know Citibank, with those wonderful commercials about how money isn’t everything.  Yes, that’s the attitude I want from a bank too.  But I digress.

One day, a letter came from Citibank informing me that a computer file in the hands of one of their vendors was compromised.  Who or what, they wouldn’t say.  Privacy, I was told.  Not my privacy, of course.  As a result, they had to change my account “for my own protection.”  The ramifications of a change of account are huge, and it would be an enormous burden on me.  What was Citibank planning to do about that?  Nothing.  “We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s for your own protection.”  I had no choice, I was told, and so they made the change despite my demand that they do nothing.  I love arguing with customer service reps.

The next day, I went online to check my account, as I had a question about whether a check had been paid.  Poof!  It was gone.  Disappeared. Like it never happened.  So I called back the CSR, “Suzy” from Bangalore, who informed me that this is what happened when they terminate an account because it was compromised.

“But what about my past statements?” I inquired without notable accent.  “Oh, we must remove and eliminate everything about the account,” Suzy patiently explained to this stupid American.  “So how do I see my statements?”  Again, Suzy repeated, “we are very sorry for the inconvenience.”  This, loosely translated, means “get lost.”

The sad truth is that my statements are gone, and they aren’t coming back no matter what.  Had I saved a tree, it would be at the expense of having no bank statements.  Try to tell the IRS that it’s Citibank’s policy.  I’m sure they will be very interested.

And what if I were to close my accounts and switch banks.  What are the chances I could always go back and access them?  I wouldn’t bank on it (get it?).

The notion of a paperless world sounds wonderful.  I love trees.  Always have.  But I also love being able to retrieve my bank statements, accounts and all the other great stuff that allows me to know who’s stealing what from me at any given time.  And sometimes you need these things years later.  Will they be there for me online?  Not likely.  I can’t imagine Citibank saving any bandwidth for me if I’m not a current customer.  In fact, I can more easily imagine Citibank accidentally deleting all my statements and having some Dairy Queen reject tell me, “I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”  I don’t believe that Citibank is truly committed to saving trees.

So the greening of American by the elimination of paper statements would result in a huge savings of resources, plus would earn banks some significant change by not having to print and mail all that stuff to me (though I’m sure the unsolicited garbage will come anyway).  But the ready availability of statements of account in the future will remain contingent on banks’ policies to preserve and permit access to accounts, today and years from today, whether you are still their customer or not.  Absent the security of knowing that they will be available to you when you need them, this is just an environmentalists dream that could turn into a banking customers’ nightmare.

Of course, I could just believe all those commercials about how banks really love me.  But love is fickle, like bank policies and explanations from Suzy in Bangalore.