Yankee Gas and Connecticut Lighting and Power go underhanded to lure customers to paperless billing

Like many residents of our nutmeg state, I prefer to receive my utilities bills by mail and pay online.

My reason is simple. With an overwhelming number of daily emails-which seem to increase weekly- I am concerned that I might skip over some important ones such as bills.

In short, there are fewer daily mail items for me to peruse than emails. Thus, it is much easier for me to spot bills among five pieces of mail than it is among 30-50 daily emails.

So, as usual, this past week I clicked on my email option to waive receiving my utility bill online in the  pop-up window that initially appears.

When I had paid the bill and received my confirmation number, I was surprised to read on the same page a notice thanking me for taking the paperless route of receiving my monthly statement.

I called a phone rep. at CT Light and Power who said that starting on Monday May 6th, the company  inserted on page 2 a checked box saying that I want to take the paperless route.

(This is after I had earlier already declined the pop-up option. )

She said I had to undo the check in  the box or indeed I would receive paperless notifications.

I can understand the utilities wishing to save expenses of paper, computer printouts and mailing costs.

But, is this the way to do business?

From now on, I will pay more attention to each line before hitting the pay now button.