One of the great things about the US is that we can do a lot of things extremely quickly due to the web and phone. If I wanted to cancel a bank account or stop my CD from rolling over again, I could do that from the phone or the web. When I was in China, some of the things that were required did not make sense.
For instance, I had to cancel internet services on behalf of my girlfriend. The telecommunications company does not allow you to cancel by phone or web so it must be done in person. In order to cancel the service, you need to bring your identification card. However, if you are canceling on behalf of someone, you need to bring their identification plus yours. For me that would mean, bringing my passport. I assume that they are afraid that someone would want to cancel internet on behalf of someone else for a malicious reason. I do not know why someone want to or would have the time to do that considering that some of the lines take a couple of hours (everything is paper so it takes forever). Anyway, I only had her ID and not mine. The customer service representative would not let me cancel the internet service without my passport. I showed her all the other ID that I had but since they did not recognize things like my drivers license, etc it did not matter. They said there was nothing she could do without an ID.
I turned around and asked the person behind me in line if I could use her ID. She handed it over to me and voila, internet cancelled. Such pain!! Experiences like that just make you appreciate how easy it is to take care of things in the United States.
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