Actually, I am not complaining. I dont particularly care which way its done - I was just trying to gauge what others do.
I still think its dumb. Our company SOP's do not involve using the SBY alt set differently to the main alts. Therefore, when descending to 3000 for example, when still passing 20000 and ATC ask you "passing FL", the pnf is required to do mental maths to figure what our FL actually is. Unless you just read the alt in which case you are passing on incorrect info to atc - once again if atc is fine with that then i dont care.
also, in OZ, the AIP clearly states - "when passing the TL, set qnh ....."etc. Is this similar to the wording in other countries.
Also, as someone stated, what happens when atc revise the alt/lvl you have been cleared to. the crew is then is required to reset the altimeters at a rather inconvenient point and could easily miss the required change - especially considering that this last minute change by atc is often with min traffic separation(this has occured to me numerous times in asia)
I fly in asia where the tl/ta is high and no one in my company can explain why we do it.