Banks wasting paper!

Grr, I hate my bank sometimes! I'm with the HSBC (no link, find them yourself if you really want to) and I've been getting annoyed with the statements they send me out each month. The statements themselves are fine, don't get me wrong. There are all kinds of facts and figures on there which would have been fairly relevant 2 weeks ago! My statement arrived today - the 23rd. The last transaction logged was on the 15th. It's completely irrelevant, obsolete etc. by now!

I finally decided I was going to call them up and get them to stop sending me statements. I was told that I have a statement savings account and that I would need to close that account and open a passbook savings account. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? I want them to print less paper and send out less mail. Maybe it's just my t-shirt talking (I'm wearing my maketradefair t-shirt today)  but I just hate companies wasting resources and the environment. If I'm going to go to all the trouble of closing my existing account with them, I might as well open my new one somewhere better!

Now, contrast that with my British bank - smile.co.uk. They send me an e-mail once a month saying that my credit card statement is available on-line. If I want to see it, I can log in and see what activity there was this past month. If not, no harm done. They have all the data on file anyway so it wasn't much work for them to make it available to me.

(sigh) I love smile. Such a good bank. They're green and ethical. Both good things.