LIPA doesn't understand paperless billing.

To be fair, it's not only LIPA (Long Island Power Authority) who doesn't have a clue when it comes to online billing. Almost everyone who tries it gets it wrong. But, they are the ones who most recently and succinctly demonstrated their shortcomings

1. The email telling me I have a new bill should tell me how much I owe them.
It does not have to include my name, address or any other personal identification, but it should at least say what I owe this month. That's because it's almost always within a few dollars of last months, and I can just pay online like I did the month before. Instead, what they do (and this is less then useless) is mail me a link to their web site, so I can sign in and read my bill.

2. Either my email address OR my account number is my user id.
I speak for every customer in the world when I say that your business is not important enough to me for me to make up a new "user id" just for you. This is not Swiss banking. You are a service and I am a customer, you can call me Mr. Aiuto. And they way you can do that is to call me by the email address I gave you.

3. I don't care about your web site. It will never be a destination for me. I will make a new password for you site once, then promptly forget it and wait for your bill to arrive each month.

Now, let's add this up. Anything less than what I suggest is a lose-lose proposition. It is more difficult for me than getting a paper bill and it is more costly for the service provider. They will have to provision for more traffic and handle increased customer support for those people who can't sign in any more.

How is that, you ask? Well, let me give you an example from real life. I forgot my LIPA user id and password. The web site will not send me my password unless I know the user id, and there is no provision for recovering my user id based on my email address. So, I'm locked out of viewing my account until I call them and talk to a human. Huh? Don't they even try to think things through?