Washington Mutual Ripoff atm's always go to spanish when no laynguage is selected La Puente California

You're complaining and you live in La Puente!

Because there is largely a hispanic presence in La Puente. Bet if you went to Beverly Hills, it would default to English.

So, where is the rip off?

In whose book ... yours?

I hate to break it to you, but we do not live in a dictatoriship in which you can determine the language people must speak.

Unofficial "official" language :)

English is NOT the official language. We have no official language. If you look back into history in constitutional times we were pretty fairly split between english and German. That's right, our official language was nearly german. We opted to not have a language as we are a melting pot.
I have some limited spanish despite not having been raised in a part of the country that requires it and I can work my way through ATM prompts in both languages.
Is it annoying to have to chose? Yeah, a bit. I agree by and large English is the functional (not official) language of the US, but guess what, I suck it up and deal with it. You are given a choice to choose your language according to you. If you do not it defaults to spanish... So choose english. It's one more button push. Get over it.
THIS IS NOT A RIP OFF

English is NOT the official language of America (although it should be). Congress attempted to make it the official language in the immigration bills passed this year. However, one section stated it would be the official language, only three sections later it stated there would be no official language.

There has been no legislation that makes English the official language. We currently have none.

Please, lets not make this a political debate, I just wanted to inform you.

And no, I am not a raging liberal or a right wing Republican. I am simply an American who does not get my news from the media.

i hate how atms do that, what you can do is complain to the company, switch banks, you need to realise weather we like it or not the bank will not care, there about making money. if they can get 20% customers and make 10% mad then they are 10% ahead. it is about the all might buck.
i know it sucks.

Try living in California and you'll see what he means. The United States DOES have English as its official language, but most government entities and businesses offer translations. It galls me, however, when English isn't offered first.

The words are probably easy to figure out.

One ATM I go to here has English, French, and some languages that I assume are Japanese, Korean, and at least one flavour of Chinese.

Fortunately the CANCEL button is the only one in red, and usually has CANCEL printed on it.

But to the point, there should be a default language store on the card itself. And starting with the most common language among the bank's customers -- likely English, even in La Puente -- seems like the right thing to do.

Why should anyone be "insulted as an American" when something is in the Spanish language? There is NO official language in the USA, and it just so happens that Spanish is becoming a very common part of our society. If it is such a huge deal to you, then why don't you take a second to press the English button at the ATM? And perhaps move to a town other than "La Puente"? (Is it really that shocking that people in a Spanish-named town speak ... Spanish??)