US$ drawn on a US bank

[Brad Templeton]

Recently I renewed my membership in Usenix.  I paid using my $U.S. checking
(chequing) account at Canada Trust, a Canadian bank-like object.  All
Canadian financial institutions offer accounts in U.S. funds, often with
chequing, for the many Canadian firms like mine that do lots of business
in the USA.

But USENIX sent my cheque back to me -- they are one of many U.S. outfits
that say "check drawn in U.S. dollars on a U.S. bank."  I had the former
but not the latter.  Most outfits that put on that warning take cheques
drawn in U.S. dollars on CDN banks, but Usenix is not one.   (So I paid
on credit card.)

Why is this?

Usenix must have enough Canadian (and other non-U.S.) members to warrant
more courtesy to them in this area.  If Usenix's bank is the one being
a pain (which I suspect) then there are many U.S. banks that *will* take
such cheques (I write them all the time to send to the USA) and Usenix should
consider switching, or at least opening a 2nd account at a nicer bank for
such drafts.

Or, if USENIX has enough CDN members, it could take the step of opening a
CDN$ account somewhere, and accepting membership fees for some reasonable
amount of CDN$.  This is nice, but not as necessary, since many Canadians
are quite used to paying for US things in US currency.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473