The UK immigration authority does not recognize printed online statements. I had to print 100 pages from my bank's website, take the paper to my bank branch, and have each page stamped by the bank to make it "original." This is a true story.

Painful. I suppose online statements are too easy to counterfeit? It's a shame the bank couldn't provide authenticated documents to you as a automated service.

Documents produced on a home printer are meaningless for identity or address verification. Anyone can open the PDF in inkscape and make it say any name, address or date they like.

Isn't it more fraudulent to give the bank home-made documents than to give them nothing? At least when you give then nothing you're being honest about what you're giving them.

Yeah, but that modification is forgery and fraud. In all honesty, I could probably replicate a paper bank statement by doing the same thing. The crime is in the manipulation.

As for me, I continue to print out bank statements on university printers and have everyone from embassies to landlords accept them.

No one I've met believes that going to your bank's website and printing out the PDF they give you is fraudulent.

I was on the phone to British Gas complaining that I suddenly stopped receiving paper statements. The agent on the phone got really helpful all of a sudden when I told him I needed the paper bills for proof of identity.

Turns out he had just gone through the whole debacle himself. He had to show a bank statement, but he only has an online account. Went to the bank to get a statement printed and stamped, and whoever he went to turn it in to still refused it because it hadn't been mailed.

Personally, I don't want to give the BA any easy reason to reject my visa applications, I get all the mailed proof of address I can.

Chase in the US rejected my recently expired US passport as secondary ID, but accepts my non-expired Indiana vehicle registration, a document laser-printed on ordinary copy paper at the BMV with no graphical elements other than form boxes that'd be trivial to counterfeit. So it's probably safe to say that "difficulty to counterfeit" is not a criterion for secondary ID at Chase (nor, apparently, is mismatched mailing address, because my vehicle isn't registered at the address on my primary ID).

Wow, I guess you just proved all those people saying they couldn't get such papers accepted are clearly lying because you've never had a problem.

The fact that they are so easily manipulated is the reason they are most often not accepted as proof of identification, regardless of criminal law. It could be totally legal and it would be in the best interests of banks/businesses to not accept them due to possible liabilities.

Used to work in retail, sold credit obo Barclays bank - we were told not to accept printed copies of bank statements but I heard stories of people asking customer to log into online banking live.

It's mostly just bureaucratic ceremony and British strict rule-following

Usually those statements or bills have a lovely big DUPLICATE watermarked across them which invalidates them for identification purposes.