Now, all this is pretty bad but manageable. Shitty customer service, a shitty system, and no attempt to make amends for failing to provide a decent standard of service. But we're set up, right? Not quite. HSBC is the only bank I know that actively prevents you from using your funds by periodically just declining your card.
We're a web business. Every month we pay a bunch of money to our web hosts (the brilliant EngineYard), Google Apps, AWS, etc. WE DO THIS EVERY MONTH. THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY. And every month an Indian dude calls me in the middle of my lunch, asks me to confirm a load of security questions, and then asks me to confirm the same transactions that I confirmed with him the month before that, and the month before that and EVERY MONTH SINCE OUR JOURNEY OF PAIN WITH HSBC STARTED.
Meanwhile EngineYard are sending us polite emails saying "Please pay us, your card was declined." The upshot is that we have a bad relationship with our hosts. I'd imagine that HSBC's website is hosted internally, because I know for sure that if it was hosted externally it would GET TURNED OFF ONCE PER MONTH BECAUSE YOUR FRAUD PREVENTION TEAM STOPPED PAYMENT FOR IT.
Three months ago I called HSBC and pointed out that this happens every month. "Ah yes Mr. Spencer, I can see that in your account. I can confirm that we will not phone you again about these transactions." Bull. Shit. Two months ago when they called back I brought it up again, in a slightly more irate manner. "Ah yes Mr. Spencer you need to speak to my colleague about that, hang on." I spoke to his colleague and explained it all AGAIN.
Then they called back a few weeks ago. I explained it all again. Everything was fine, again; no fraud or unusual activity (SO WHY DID YOU CALL?). The card is fine and working, the EngineYard payment will go through, I'm told. I explain to the guy that if I ever have a phone call like this again where I have to explain, for the millionth time, why my business uses American hosting providers, I will change banks and never look back. "No, no Mr. Spencer, I'm trying to help you. You just need to speak to my colleague..."
No, I don't. I've spoken to everyone. Nobody I have ever dealt with at HSBC has any respect for my time. I've repeated myself dozens of times with HSBC to no avail, at every step of the process, to different staff members who can't pass a message along to save me from having to explain it again.
I tell the Indian guy that I'll leave him to resolve it. If he can't then that's fine, we'll switch banks.
He calls back to say it's all resolved. A week later, an email from EngineYard. Card declined.
My wife has a horrible time with HSBC, and I always get a bit aggitated when I see people recommend them, so I'm glad to see other people sharing their horror stories about them.
Her situation is that she visits family in Canada once a year. They won't make a note of her being out of the country if she calls them beforehand. The fraud people then call her if she needs to use her card at unsociable (for Canada) hours and never leave answerphone messages. When they do get her, they require her to answer security questions without identifying themselves first. If she calls them, the person she speaks to has no way of knowning if anyone has been trying to call her for any reason.
The problem is that they all suck. In the UK, I've tried NatWest (RBS), Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC and so far, and HSBC are the least worst... they are by no means good, but they're better than many of the others. They still have numerous problems though: customer service agents that disagree with each other and provide inconsistent information, that annoying online banking dongle, payments being declined at random (particularly embarrassing in shops).
Still, at least unlike NatWest, it didn't take 3 weeks of dealing with different customer services staff to withdraw some cash, and I never got their online banking to work at all... after repeated attempts. Every customer service staff member would make excuses about not being able to help me due to their security restrictions.
HSBC is one of the only banks to have a section on their Online Banking where you can tell them your travel plans and which cards you will be taking. Has always prevented fraud calls for me.
I don't know what the hell you do in real life, but you need to write books. Seriously your 2 comments were engaging, hilarious, and just fun to read. It's like a mini-story in a comment.
Out of all the incompetent people you mentioned, why did you feel the need to refer to another incompetent, who happened to be Indian, as the Indian dude. :( ... little things like this constantly remind me of our perception in the world.
It's because all those big corporations outsource their customer service to India and surrounding countries, and whenever we get a call from those outsourced agent, they're always unable to do anything because they're not given access to the big corps network. So specifying 'Indian' most likely meant that - the typical outsourced customer service - instead of being a specific rant about the nationality. It could be any other nationality if the Call Centre of this World were held somewhere else.
Now I'm not saying this is appropriate or not, I'm just explaining the reference.
The Indian guys I speak to are never incompetent. They're always super helpful and friendly. I pointed out that he's Indian because it shows, for me, that HSBC cares more about bottom line than they do the user experience. It doesn't mean that the guy can't provide the same level of support than someone in the UK, but it does mean that a whole bunch of users are going to phone up and have problems with the accent or feel that the support team is disenfranchised from the bank, and misattribute a negative outcome of the incident to the fact that the person is Indian. Whilst I'm super cool about Indian CS I really hate phoning Sky's customer team which is based in Scotland. My family is Scottish and even then I find some impossible accents up there.
Thanks for reminding me, I've been meaning to switch from them for a while. Their telephone banking works until you want to ask them anything unusual (like more than ordering a new card, they just can't tell you any information - it's totally shit.
This has been exactly my experience with HSBC. I moved to First Direct half a year ago, and so far, no fraud prevention Indians. Or Scots, for that matter.
We're a web business. Every month we pay a bunch of money to our web hosts (the brilliant EngineYard), Google Apps, AWS, etc. WE DO THIS EVERY MONTH. THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY. And every month an Indian dude calls me in the middle of my lunch, asks me to confirm a load of security questions, and then asks me to confirm the same transactions that I confirmed with him the month before that, and the month before that and EVERY MONTH SINCE OUR JOURNEY OF PAIN WITH HSBC STARTED.
Meanwhile EngineYard are sending us polite emails saying "Please pay us, your card was declined." The upshot is that we have a bad relationship with our hosts. I'd imagine that HSBC's website is hosted internally, because I know for sure that if it was hosted externally it would GET TURNED OFF ONCE PER MONTH BECAUSE YOUR FRAUD PREVENTION TEAM STOPPED PAYMENT FOR IT.
Three months ago I called HSBC and pointed out that this happens every month. "Ah yes Mr. Spencer, I can see that in your account. I can confirm that we will not phone you again about these transactions." Bull. Shit. Two months ago when they called back I brought it up again, in a slightly more irate manner. "Ah yes Mr. Spencer you need to speak to my colleague about that, hang on." I spoke to his colleague and explained it all AGAIN.
Then they called back a few weeks ago. I explained it all again. Everything was fine, again; no fraud or unusual activity (SO WHY DID YOU CALL?). The card is fine and working, the EngineYard payment will go through, I'm told. I explain to the guy that if I ever have a phone call like this again where I have to explain, for the millionth time, why my business uses American hosting providers, I will change banks and never look back. "No, no Mr. Spencer, I'm trying to help you. You just need to speak to my colleague..."
No, I don't. I've spoken to everyone. Nobody I have ever dealt with at HSBC has any respect for my time. I've repeated myself dozens of times with HSBC to no avail, at every step of the process, to different staff members who can't pass a message along to save me from having to explain it again.
I tell the Indian guy that I'll leave him to resolve it. If he can't then that's fine, we'll switch banks.
He calls back to say it's all resolved. A week later, an email from EngineYard. Card declined.
Cheerio, HSBC.