Online submission forms

I'm not sure why, but these make me nervous. On one hand, I suppose it should feel like "Oh, hey, they're making it a little easier for me!", but for whatever reason, it's also turning me off.

The three agencies I was looking at - Waxman, Levine Greenberg, and Veltre - all had decent reputations last I checked (with Preditors and Editors). What's the general attitude about this?

Personally, I'd rather send a query via email to save trees, but I respect that some agents want to see something "hardcopy" (maybe because the perception is that something solid has gotten more thought and consideration than something virtual). Even at that... I don't know.

Am I the only one to feel this way? Is it kind of snobby of me to have this turn-off reaction?

I don't mind email queries - I prefer those since it's less expensive and doesn't use trees - but online submission forms where the agents have pre-set forms... they just make me nervous. Maybe it's from not really knowing where the form is being sent?

Or maybe I just take it as appearing less professional. To me, the relationship between an author and an agent should be "at will", with the formatting and phrasing of the queries and such being a "first foot forward" that's taken away with a pre-set form. I know when I worked as a recruiter, my workload tripled screening people through an online form because people that we would have otherwise recognized as being not a good fit were able to slip through.

(Can you tell I've been thinking about it all day? I'm facing the "find an agent" music in a week or so and doing my homework.)