Alastair,
I'm wondering whether some of your experiences might be due to moving per
se, rather than being in the US. Banks and big companies in Australia stuff
up names quite easily. Names and details available on request.
Maybe your experience is actually a symptom of *advanced" techniques. We all
know banks and big institutions are out-sourcing everything. This is usually
to low-playing places, increasingly in overseas countries with
less-than-perfect English. It would not suprise me at all to see numerous
spelling mistakes.
One big US company (forget which one) even went so far as to train call
centre workers in India to speak with American accents and to have "American
identities" such as brother in college, small city home, etc.
- tony
Alastair wrote:
I've just moved to the US from Australia (or "Awe-strilia" as it's known
over here :) and have had lots of opportunities to reflect on the
differences between the two countries. Frankly the move has not been easy,
and there were a few surprises.
In a lot of situations I have found that technology is more widespread in
Australia than here in the US. A good example of this was signing my car
insurance contract - it was the first time I had seen a real piece of carbon
paper in years! I almost fell over backwards...
Also I have seen enough variations on the spelling of my name over the last
few months to be convinced that there is still a lot of manual retyping of
information done here in the US. Of course my name is sufficiently unusual
here in the US to make errors more likely here for the same amount of manual
retyping in Australia.
Direct deposit is a thing we take for granted in Australia. I love the
ability most Australian bank have to do a direct deposit into someone else's
account over the internet, with an accompanying description. In fact I have
carried out conversations with people this way, transferring small amounts
each time (OK so I'm a geek :). Such a facility is not available at all in
the US, at least not with such convenience.
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