Last November, BOA forgot to mail my mortgage coupon. Fortunately I realized that I hadn't paid, but when I went online I couldn't find the physical address to which I should send payment, only the option of starting direct withdrawal from my account. So I ended up pulling an old statement and sending payment to the correct address.

Then the next month, I didn't get a statement. So I sent physical payment again through the mail and used the feedback option...twice.

I got two different stories from each customer service representative. One said they sent the coupon, the other said that they hadn't due to software issues. At that point my suspicion was more or less confirmed that they wanted to encourage me to switch to electronic payments - and felt that a missed payment penalty might encourage such a switch.

The way I see it, there's an MBA somewhere who decided that there was more profit in not sending statements through the mail and more profit if they could collect a late fee and more profit if they could accidentally deduct additional money from my account unless I caught it.

ATT did the same thing with my business phone.

Both the local cable companies do it.

It's just the way business works these days.