The "Paperless billing was requested" (minor) scam -- AT&T edition

I got this AT&T text message the other day...

Except, of course, I never requested paperless billing. I suppose I should have for purely ecological reasons, but Emily prefers the paper copy. It’s her workflow — and modern email is unreliable for many people (flow control is the big issue).

I suspect this was a side-effect of some minor service agreement, like accepting AT&T’s recent (unexpected) increase in our mobile share data allowance. AT&T is showing a bit of its old dirty tricks here (they are generally much reformed), especially the requirement to correct this by (ugh) making an (ugh) phone call.

I will probably accept this one — it feels like a battle not worth fighting. AT&T isn’t alone in this sort of thing, corporations have become quite clever at tricking customers into accepting paperless billing — without, say, offering to share the savings.