whisky-dave wrote
Rod Speed wrote
NY wrote
Rod Speed wrote
NY wrote

For B&W (eg letters) a laser is probably a better buy than
an inkjet - no streaky print if it's not been used for a while.

What is the point of printing letters anymore ?

For companies that need an "official", signed document.

Havent come across one of those in decades now.

Most solicitors requre such things to be physically signed on paper.

Yes, but they are the ones who printed what gets signed, not the signer.
So while it certainly makes sense for the solicitor to have a laser printer
that they use to print what gets signed, no need for the signer to have one.

And most of what gets signed on a piece of paper now
needs a proper witness etc, so you can't even claim that
its convenient to have a printer at home so you can print
what arrives electronically and post it back now.

For the very very few items where that is still needed,
it makes more sense to print it down the library etc
instead of having a laser printer at home for the very
very few occasions where you do need to do that now.

For some things such as house deeds signing over
ownership they DO NOT accept emails or even fax.

Sure, but in that case its the solicitor that prints it, not the signer.

Selfies of you signing it aren't accdepted either you still need a
witness.

So it makes sense for the solicitor to print it, not the signer.

Makes more sense to print those down the library etc on the
very rare occasion where you come across one of those now.

Yes plenty of places can print for you now.

or which only provide a "Contact Us" web form: I find that an email

Which doesnt need anything printed.

or a written letter is harder to ignore and more likely to elicit a
response than a web form which I suspect often gets redirected to
/dev/null or else to a junior support sprog who tries to palm you off
with platitudes and who utterly fails to address the points you raise.

Written letters just get filed in the round filing cabinet under the
desk.

Depending on the contents the written letter might be
as it was with the windrush files and should have been
scanned or photographed in some way and stored.

If they do that, they will keep the emails they receive too.

This will change over time, though the signed
letter for financial authorisation may take a
long time to be dragged into the 21st century.

Phone calls worked fine for share trading even in the 60s.

doesn't mean they do now.

But they dont even now require a snailmail letter.

Even with buying houses etc, I didnt need
to print anything, the agent did that.

The agent charges for such things
or it's included in the costs.

Still means that there is no need for the
buyer to print anything, the agent does that.

Or in our case, the solicitor actually shows up at the
auction in person with the printed paperwork which
the buyer signs once they have won at the auction.

Thats what happened with the one I bought and what
happened at the auction I attended last Saturday too.

I have savings with one company who will accept a fax of a signed
letter in lieu of it being sent by post, but will not accept an emailed
scan of the same letter. Work that one out! They are both images
of the same written document, just sent via different technology.

Good reason to dump those dinosaurs.

faxes are more difficult to fake,

Bull****. Particularly when few have a fax anymore so have
to take it to somewhere that still has a fax to send it.

I wouldn't dump them,

More fool you.

I'd rather they are careful than just
accepting anyhting as proof. It's not
like emails are dufficult to forge.

No difficulty forging what gets faxed either.

I did have a couple of banks a few decades ago that dinosaury,
but havent come across one that dinosaury for decades now.

In fact I did the last one by phone. Got them to setup and automatic
payment in full of the credit card balance every month from another
bank which pays a better interest rate on my substantial cash deposits.
Plenty let you do that with online forms now too.