When we moved to Aiken we started banking at the Aiken County Bank. They had a whopping two branches, but one of them was right along our drive to and from work, so it was convenient as heck. Ten years ago they sold out to a larger regional bank called Carolina First, same two branches in town, but occasionally we would stumble onto another Carolina First while traveling and could save the ATM fees when we needed some cash. Middle of last year Carolina First was sucked up by the 15th largest bank in the US with assets of just over 200 trillion dollars, TD Bank.
When TD Bank loaded up their software into my old friend the ATM at 142 Chesterfield Street they added a nifty little personalization step that allows users to set what amount they want as their default Fast Cash withdrawal and whether you want a receipt with each transaction and I can’t really remember, but maybe one or two other things. This is really nice because 9 times out of 10 I just want $20 cash, but they left out one important setting.
The first screen that is displayed after swiping your card is one asking you to choose one of the eight different languages you could use to communicate with the machine. Oh, today I think I would like to practice my Arabic, no, no, French, nah…maybe Japanese. Come on, don’t you think that the language should be one of the things you could personalize?