The suspicious Londoner, in case you were wondering, is me. (Incidentally, this might be the first time I have ever referred to myself as a Londoner, rather than being from Yorkshire – living somewhere for more than 15 years will do this to you.)
The lesson that I’ve learnt is about interacting with people. In the UK, and particularly in London, virtually everything you do is easiest online. You shop at Amazon, get your groceries at Ocado (or Tesco), keep in touch with friends on Facebook, and get insurance, utilities, credit cards and bank accounts courtesy of a ridiculous meerkat or an appalling parody of a tenor.
Arriving in the US, we needed car insurance. So off I go to a website. The quote is really expensive and when I forwarded it to the local agent asking if they could help reduce it, I had no reply at all (this is you, State Farm). So Charlie persuaded me that we could do better at the local insurance broker round the corner. (I would never have done this in London.) And of course, the quote was cheaper, the cover was better, and he explained everything to us as well. Mea culpa.
The problem was that while I was farting around with insurance websites, the dealer sold the car Charlie had her eye on. But again, knowing people came to the rescue and, courtesy of an Englishman called Jools, we found a natty blue Beetle that Charlie, and Alice, love.
I had a similar experience with American Express: fill out a form on the website and wait a fortnight for nothing to happen. Call them: the card is in the post the next day…
So, Chris, you nasty suspicious Londoner, stop trying to do everything online and start talking to people!
South of the Mason-Dixon line 