The Telecom Bill

I'll keep the stamps; you keep the employees.

I'm a micro-hippopotamus. Franqui's the name and musing is my game.

Fortunately, with micro hippo eyes as small as mine, I can read the insert with the very small print that came with my phone bill in yesterday's mail. Beginning next month, my telecom company is going to start charging me an extra dollar a month because I haven't agreed to let it dip directly into my bank account every month for automatic bill pay.

Auto pay is easy and convenient, the company says.

It's extortion, I say.

I remember reading the fine print when I signed up for phone service. Reading fine print is not a problem when you're a micro-hippo. I always read the fine print, just for fun, even if it doesn't matter what I read. Try deleting or changing some of the words in that on-line contract. You can't do it. You only have two choices: 1) check the accept box or 2) check the reject box... and take a hike. You can always sign a contract with another telecommunications provider, but that company, too, is sure to have the same kind of contract: check here or check out. No negotiations possible.

Would it even matter if I could sign a contract that let me pay by check through the mail? Not really, because buried deeper down in the small print is a clause that almost every consumer service contract has today: a clause that lets the service provider change the contract unilaterally at any time.

Of course, you thought that the essence of a contract was that there must be a "meeting of the minds" as to what it is you have agreed on. But no more: today, most consumer service contracts have a clause that lets the company change the contract after you've signed it. It’s like playing chess where the other player can change the rules, whenever and however. Or, like international diplomacy. I'm just a hippopotamus, but it sure seems to me that if one party can change the language of the contract whenever it wants to, then there is no "meeting of the minds" and, therefore, no contract.

But, I agreed to that clause, the courts say, when I signed the contract! That is, I agreed to a contract that, by definition, is not a contract. What?

And furthermore, the Company says, all I have to do is NOT agree to check the "I agree" box and find another service provider. Except that all the service providers have the same contractual language. You can pick any brand, but their contracts are the same. Like elections in America, you have a vote, but you don't have a choice.

Maybe, thinks my telecom company, I missed the point about the new dollar a month charge for continuing to pay my bills by mail? Just in case I didn't get the hint, the self-addressed return envelope enclosed with my bill encourages me, with chirpy exhortations printed inside the flap and outside in the upper right corner, to "Save A Stamp - Go Green!" Do I get it? When you're a hippopotamus, being "green" is a way of life. So shouldn't a hippo do the environmental thing, save a stamp and save the planet by paying automatically, letting the Company dip directly into my bank account?

I demur. Hippos do a lot of demurring. It's completely off-topic, but if you ever run across a full-size 10,000 lbs. demurring hippopotamus, I suggest that you just whistle nonchalantly and walk on by. When it comes to micro-hippos, well, maybe you can just ignore me. Like my telecom company does.

I actually like postage stamps. Except for the bland flag stamps that come a hundred to a roll, I like to use stamps commemorating good or silly things, animals, birds, flowers; and colorful stamps of science and geography; and breath-taking artistic stamps. Are these things really environmentally unfriendly? If so, they are far less detrimental to the planet's well-being than the hydrocarbon plastics and the exotic elements used to make my cell phone, all of them mined, pumped or extracted from the ground by excruciatingly hard, underpaid, unhealthy labor in faraway despoiled lands. My postage stamps are not ruining the planet. My phone and my telecom company are ruining the planet.

So what's with the "Save A Stamp, Go Green" mantra printed on every bill-pay envelope I have ever seen? The answer is: they really don't mean it.

What the companies really mean when they say "Save a Stamp, Go Green" is that they want your help in laying off their employees.

Processing a check, although largely automated, still requires some human labor. The "green" that the companies want you to save is the companies' own, i.e., money. The fewer paper checks they have to process, the fewer laborers the companies need. And the fewer laborers they employ, the less money the companies have to pay for labor, for health care, for retirement, for sick leave, for all the things that non-automatons require for ordinary living. All of those money savings translate into profit for the companies. That's what they mean by "going green."

Sorry telecom, I demur: I'll keep the stamps; you keep the employees.

This is Franqui. Hippomusing out loud.