This is one of the ugly faces of the American capitalism that I absolutely despise because it affects my daily life. The assholes do it, I think, for two reasons. One, because they want to protect themselves on the cheap, by shifting as much of the cost on the customer as possible, which is the typical way American business operate anyway. If they had to make it more user friendly, say, by sing electronic signature cards with encoded information stored on it, it would cost them more money. Second, I think they deliberately want to make it as difficult to customers as possible, so they can rip them off with "penalties" and other sneak charges. Another possibility is that people who write that software are either sadistic pricks who enjoy making people miserable, or morons who can write code but have zero understanding how human brain actually operates (or both.)
In any case, this is becoming unmanageable and I wonder how other deal with this bullshit. My casual observations indicate that some people simply do not give a shit, they avoid dealing with them, and then do not mind paying surcharges and penalties that result from it. However, giving these fucking assholes a penny over what I absolutely have to makes me sick in my stomach, so this is not an option. I tried "bill consolidation" software such as Mint.com or Pageonce that is supposed to bring information from different accounts together, but they do not work as advertised, they cannot access certain accounts, which makes them pretty useless because they add another layer of complexity instead of reducing it. Any other suggestions other than cutting internet connections altogether and returning to paper and pencil business communication?
-- Wojtek http://wsokol.blogspot.com/