Every country has banks, but banks operate differently in every country. In this episode, Andrew and Maura sit down for a chat about banking in Canada. Join them as they talk about opening their first bank accounts, technological advances in banking, and annoying bank fees!

Expressions from this episode included in the Learning Materials:

* To take a walk down memory lane

* Stores being closed on Sundays

* A hard copy

* Living in the Stone Age

* Old school To tackle a problem

* To store money under your mattress

* Interac

* To get dinged

* To be cheap

 

Sample Transcript:

Andrew: I’m pretty good. How are you?

Maura: Yeah, yeah. I’m all right. So what’s been happening with you lately?

Andrew: I had a pretty frustrating day today. I was on the phone all day long with my bank.

Maura: Oh, I hate that, when you have to call and wait, and you already have a problem, and you just get more frustrated. What happened?

Andrew: Yeah. It was really frustrating, actually. It was my own mistake. I locked myself out of my online banking because I forgot my password.

Maura: OK, right. Yeah, if you make three mistakes, so if you try to get into your bank account three times and you’re wrong three times, it automatically locks you out, right?

Andrew: Exactly. So it’s a good idea to choose a complicated password because then you won’t get hacked, but it’s also hard to remember. So I locked myself out and it took forever to get my password reset so I could get back into my bank account.

Maura: Right. I bet they asked you a ton of information to make sure that you were really Andrew.

Andrew: Yes. And I also learned you have to be a good speller to do this, because there are a bunch of personal questions that they will ask you to confirm your identity. However, they won’t ask you for the full word, they’ll just ask you for the third and seventh letter of the word. So you have to spell all the words in your head and figure out, “Oh, the third let is a W and the seventh letter is an A.” And yeah, I guess this is another security measure, but it was challenging.

Maura: Yeah. Actually, I’m just thinking how much more challenging it would be if English wasn’t your first language, because it’s already challenging enough for a native speaker.

Andrew: Exactly. I wouldn’t want to do that in a language that wasn’t English, for me.

Audio/Learning Materials: Culips English Learning Podcast