Never would I have imagined that something as mundane as paying a household bill could be so different on opposite sides of the Atlantic. But strangely enough, one aspect is exactly the opposite over here - with peculiar and perhaps unforeseen repercussions.
The standard the (western?) world over for invoices seems to be that they start with the corporate logo of the provider/seller in the top left- or right-hand corner, followed by information (address, telephone number, reference numbers, etc.) about the sender and recipient, and finally details of the service or product purchased and billed.
In an effort to make payment and processing easier, many firms integrate a tear-off slip into their invoice that can, as the name suggests, be torn off - ideally along a perforated line - and returned with payment. That way the party issuing the bill can easily associate the payment with the invoice and therefore the customer.
In Europe, the tear-off slip is at the bottom of the page, but here in the States it is invariably at the top.
I expect this is probably so that the provider/seller immediately has the customer's address etc., which are printed at the top of the invoice for mailing purposes. Unfortunately, as the paying customer you are left with this:
a bill albeit bearing a helpful reminder to "retain this lower portion for your records" but neither the name, address nor the logo of the company you've paid! So unless you remember to write the provider's name on your payment record, you have absolutely no idea who sent you the bill!
And have you ever tried filing an anonymous bill?!
Luckily, this bill contains two subtle hints - "water" & "sewer" - as to its origins, but given that all the company names are new to me, I often am more-or-less completely at a loss to know what I've paid whom for.
This isn't an isolated example either. I've received top-of-page tear-off slips from the electricity company, the gas company, the local authority (e.g. the above bill), the phone company and even my credit-card provider (and they're just the ones I can think of straight away). In fact, I can't think of a single provider that has supplied a slip at the more consumer-friendly end of the page. I've even had electricity bills running (don't ask me why) into several pages, the top of each of which contained a perforated tear-off slip, even though only the first was intended for return with payment.
Worst of all, being a concerned citizen keen to improve the world around me, I have no idea who to suggest my revolutionary end-of-page tear-off slip idea to. Although this being America, there's probably an American Association of Tear-Off Slip Manufacturers with an army of highly-paid lobbyists in Washington working hard to prevent such socialist* ideas from being implemented in the US of A.
Perhaps I'll have to patent my idea then. So for now, keep it to yourselves, OK?
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* Anything people don't like, from tax reform and state-sponsored healthcare to investing in rail networks (I'm serious!), is eventually damned as "socialist" by its opponents and/or Fox News**. Ironically, if said "socialist" idea is in danger of being adopted, the nay-sayers move to the next stage: likening the proponent(s) of the scheme to Hitler. The obvious impossibility of this position aside, the level of historical knowledge over here doesn't suggest this is because he was a National Socialist.
** It's actually got so far that politicians try to completely avoid using the terms "social" and "socialised" because people - especially the right-wing media - automatically associate them with socialism, à la socialised medicine today, the Gulag tomorrow!
