Personal experience. Why I love American banks

Фото: Depositphotos

I always leave American banks like the pig Funtik from the Soviet cartoon - in a good mood and with caramel on my cheek. This is not because I have a lot of money lying there, alas. I have other reasons for this. I counted five reasons to love banks in the USA.

1. For cute gifts

When I opened an account in a large American bank, I was unexpectedly presented with a teddy pony the size of a live fat cat. As I later read on his label, this pony is Mike, and he is the bank's talisman. Long ago, at the dawn of the development of a financial organization, Mike drove a stagecoach with bank employees so that they could serve customers in cities and villages. At the same time, Mike often drove people and valuables to the station, overcoming his fear of the noise of trains, and that's what made him a talisman, but this story made me really spiritually richer.

By the way, “welcome” gifts are a fairly common occurrence. At another bank, on her first visit, my friend was given a whole package of assorted gifts “for all occasions”: a notepad, pen, stickers and a first aid kit. I tried for a long time to find a logical connection between these items, and in the end I came to the following conclusion: if the funds from the first aid kit did not help, you can write a will.

2. For transparency

By checking my American account through Internet banking, I find out not only where I spent how much, but also from whom I received how much. Unfortunately, in the Internet banks of Russian financial organizations you can find all the necessary details only regarding spending, but where the money came into your account is a mystery shrouded in darkness. Of course, when you have one source of income, this is not a problem, but if your services are paid for by different companies, it is more pleasant to know exactly who, how much and when transferred to your account.

3. For variety

Having left for the United States after several years of working at a Russian bank, I could not imagine that the conditions for using a bank card might differ so much in different banks.

So, in one US bank, the standard debit card service charge was $ 10 per month, but these expenses could have been avoided by making at least 10 purchases per month or storing $ 1500 in the account.

In another bank, servicing a similar card is completely free, but the client is obliged to spend $ 10 per year on charity. In this case, the client chooses which of the five charitable organizations to give money.

Фото: Depositphotos

4. For an individual approach

As a rule, if a bank branch is located in areas of large concentrations of immigrants from a particular country, the staff of the branch tries to have at least one employee who speaks the language of potential clients.

However, if you need to get some kind of complicated financial service, and you don’t know English banking terms, you don’t have to go to the Russian region.

In a number of banks, the manager can, at the request of the client, connect an interpreter to the conversation. No, there are no translators in Russian, Chinese or Ukrainian in the department, waiting for someone to need them, the manager simply calls the call center and asks to be connected to the translation service. Then the client picks up the phone and in his native language tells the translator what he needs, and the latter then tells the staff of the department in English. It turns out a long time, but you can be sure that the manager will eventually do exactly what you want.

5. For compliments

Every time I go to the bank, my personal manager - a middle-aged Indian woman - starts praising my backpack. Although by the third time the verbatim eulogy to the owls and foxes depicted on the backpack began to tire me, I was still pleased that Chandrima was trying to please me. Plus, I usually use this moment of admiration to rummage through the candy bowl and pull out something special, like a root beer-flavored lollipop.

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