I'm confused

All this time in England, I've been telling people that America is the land of convenience. A land where anything private runs smoothly and where good service is paramount. A land where a public gym is like something out of Dante, yes, but a land where you can refill your prescriptions on the phone or online and pick them up an hour later at your 24 hour pharmacy. In England, I was dismayed at the NHS prescription refill process. I was not only dismayed, I was in disbelief. "I have to BRING a piece of PAPER to the doctor's office, wait TWO days, and then go back and GET the piece of PAPER?" After a while, I came up with the idea of mailing my refill request and enclosing a self addressed stamped envelope, but it still seemed terribly inefficient and backwards, and I never quite accepted it. I was always looking forward to being back in the US when I pondered these matters. In my mind, it remained the land of late-night shopping every night, of 24 hour supermarkets, of supreme customer service and of easy commercial transactions. Now I'm back and I'm confused.

You see, in England, I haven't used my checkbook in years. Everything's online. I've paid my rent by direct debit, which means my money goes straight out of my bank account into my landlord's account. No paper. Nothing in the mail. No fee. I've used the same system to pay all my bills. Even if the bill was different amounts each month. I've even used the same system to pay a friend back when I owed her money. My mother-in-law had used the same system to give me a birthday deposit. No checks. No fee. It's easy and it's efficient.

So my husband and I expected the system to be the same or better when we got here. He expected it because I have been telling him that this is the land of convenience. Me, I guess, because of some kind of romanticized nostalgia for my homeland coupled with a lack of real experience in such things, as I left when I was 20.

I bank with HSBC in the US now, a big international bank which I would expect to be modern, green (at least to pay lip service to the consciences of their customers) and efficient. Instead, I find that paying a bill online merely triggers the bank to mail the company I'm paying a check. I'm sorry, but this is totally stone age as far as I'm concerned. There is also no way to make an online payment to a friend or family member or anyone else. The only system is the above mentioned bill pay system. Which we found out when my husband tried to make an electronic payment to my account (different accounts, same bank). You see, he had the money to pay the rent in his account but no checkbook. I had a checkbook but not enough money. So the payment was made from his account to mine. I received nothing. My rent check bounced. Then I received a bank check in the mail, reading "Please accept payment from our mutual client." What a farce!

I expect public things to be shambolic here. I have experienced bureaucratic nightmares aplenty. But I am really confused as to why the world's most enthusiastic free-market economy is so backwards in its day-to-day financial systems. Or is it because I'm not rich? Maybe it's easier for them- in that either Gold accounts or Business accounts come with special privileges, or in that the fees mean little to them. Or maybe the British banks are too generous and have failed to extract every penny they can from their customers, while their American cousins are taking their customers for everything they've got. Heck, most commercial banks in England abolished their ATM machine fees years ago due to public outcry. Now I'm traipsing all over the place looking for an HSBC branch everytime I want to take out $20, and no one seems to think this is weird. I guess this is the hard lesson of advanced capital. Well maybe not THE hard lesson, I'll leave that to Naomi Klein. But perhaps the US banks figure why make things so easy when you can charge extra for them? Here, if you want to make a truly electronic payment, you have to pay a hefty wire transfer fee. So I guess I've figured it out. But I'm still pissed. Maybe I should re-title this post "The grass is always greener." Maybe getting my prescription refills so easily is more about the drug industry maximizing profit than providing a convenient customer experience... Oh.