I feel for you there, that must be very frustrating! As an American, I've never had a problem being understood in the UK or New Zealand. Maybe that's because American accents are pretty familiar due to movies, etc. ?

I find Americans talk slower and enunciate better.

I think so too. Sometimes I get lost watching TV dramas on BBC America. Like in Torchwood Rhys's accent lost me sometimes. Luckily my girlfriend sounds a little posh so I don't have an issue understanding her.

Yeah couple the accent and speed up the speech and drop a letter here or there and it gets very difficult for Americans that are not used to any accent other than their own to understand someone.

I will admit that in rural Ireland I asked someone to repeat themselves three times, then thanked them and left, with no idea what they'd said!

I found the Glasgow accent the hardest to understand on our last trip. Not impossible by any means, but I had to listen closely.

I took my wife to Edinburgh for the military tattoo in 1999 we camped in Musselburgh about 6 miles from the centre of Edinburgh.

When I went into the campsite office to get a couple of pitches for 2 nights, the site owner and myself resorted to sign langauge and hand gestures because we couldn't understand a word the other was saying.

I'd never really thought about this before - but I'm sure that as well as region of the country (cosmopolitan vs. clannish/xenophobic) another important variable is employment field. I'm an academic librarian, working in universities or colleges... I think being an obvious foreigner, sounding and/or looking foreign, is a positive asset to being offered a job in academia.

Posh...that's funny...we always get that comment when we meet Americans. 'Where are you from? I love your accent...you sound so posh'.

I love when they ask me if I am scottish nothing wrong with that except I am from Norfolk

I hate it when they ask me if I'm German.

When they say 'where are you from' I always say New Jersey.

Yes dim buggers I say CA,.... the best is the orientals, when they say 'where you from, you have accent"... reply 'oh and you don't"

I work in a call centre in Pensacola Florida, I have a very neutral accent, I'm from Cardiff but just have a general accent, you wouldn't think I was Welsh but then it's not obviously an English accent either.

A lot of my callers think I'm Australian like the Geico gecko (LOL hilarious), I then proceed to talk in an Australian accent so they can see the big difference.

I can understand most accents in the US apart from the real southern strong accent in MS and LA and also black men who put on this ghetto accent (as my wife says) and use a lot of slang and don't pronounce words properly, ask = axe, four = foe, nine = nigh there are more but I'm not perfect either just gotta get used it. But everyone is very polite which is nice!

When someone doesn't understand me, they just say - sir, first time this happend I thought they wanted to say something.

I get a lot of compliments about how clear I speak and how it's nice to hear an accent that anybody can understand.

oh I know my accents, I now the difference between the different regions. I used to not know, but I know several different accents, and the difference between normal speech and posh unlike most Americans

You know Americans who use the word 'posh'?