Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Letter to HSBC

This letter has been sent to Mark A Loker (Service Manager), Jim Large (General Manager UK Operations) and the Branch Manager HSBC Beeston.

Dear Sirs / Madam

Please find enclosed my original letter of complaint. I suggest you read it before continuing with this letter.

Before I go any further I wish to make it clear that I understand that the persons reading this letter are not directly responsible for the mistreatment I have received at the hands of HSBC. However, since the corporation is deemed, legally, to be a human being and you employees are the earthbound ambassadors I have no choice but to vent my frustrations at you directly. It’s not personal. I hope you understand this.

On the 12th July Mark A Loker sent me a reply to my initial letter promising a response to my complaints about the mismanagement of my account and what I thought were unfair bank charges. My original letter was not (repeat: NOT) concerned with the ongoing public debate about bank charges in general and was instead about a very specific incident. I have now waited over a month for my matter to be looked at and instead of the personal and detailed response I was expecting I received your standard letter (dated the 10th August) regarding the ongoing court case involving the OFT and the accusation of bank charge mishandlings. In this letter you state that no open complaints involving bank charges will be attended to until the general court case is settled.

The level of anger and frustration I feel at your response is so great that I am struggling to keep my language under control. It’s so great, in fact, that I am struggling not to immediately close down my account with HSBC and refuse to pay any loan payments or overdraft fees back just so I get a human, real response from you. Talking to HSBC is like shouting at a brick wall. Trying to raise a legitimate issue with you is akin to whispering at the bottom of a mountain and hoping, just hoping, that my voice may be lucky enough to be carried to the top. It never is. It never never never is. All I get for my troubles, for the ‘loyalty’ that you seem to crave so desperately, is the written equivalent of the middle finger – fobbing me off and letting my complaints drown amongst the voices of a million other dissatisfied customers.

My complaint was a simple one. I felt that you had unfairly managed my account and that there had been, somewhere along the line, either a human or computer error. All my complaint required was for one person – assumedly the manager of my branch to whom my letter was originally addressed – to assess the situation and make a decision. Easy. Really easy. I laid all the information out for you, I coherently described my situation and I respectfully asked for a swift response. Instead I got an empty letter promising to do something, a questionnaire asking about my loyalty to your organisation and now a letter which dismisses me with one fell swoop.

Is this how HSBC practices their business? Is this an example of being the Worlds Local BankTM? Is this how you hope to ensure my dedication to your corporation? If the answer is yes to any of those then you have severely misunderstood the needs of the banking public. All I ever wanted was to be treated like a human being (again, something you were very interested in finding out about in your beloved questionnaire) and have my complaint looked at by another human being who could make a decision. Instead I find myself wasting time writing to you AGAIN instead of the myriad of other things – IE my job – that I should be getting on with.

While I am sure it is wonderful being one of the worlds richest institutions, with your political connections, bottomless cash supply and army of lawyers, I assure that it is not so much fun on the receiving end. My issue was over a £150 bank charge – not exactly a lot of money to you but a quarter of a monthly wage to me – and instead of dealing with my complaint in an adult and responsible manner you have elected to simply throw me on a pile and forget about me for as long as possible. If you think I’m going to wait while you drag this through the courts – delaying, amending, correcting and filing for a couple of years and then hoping that I’ll forget about it then you are grossly mistaken.

(On a side note, I hadn’t planned on pursuing my bank charges from the last 5 years – but after this insulting example of mistreatment you can be damned sure that I’m going to do my best to get every penny you ever took back).

I shall end this letter with a plea. I want the three people who will receive it to look at the following paragraph very, very carefully and drag up as many memories of what it is like to be poor and pissed off as possible. I want you to forget that I am just another number, just another ranting annoyed customer and instead look into your hearts and empathise with what it is like to be trying so hard to make your way through life and be countered at every turn by a giant, unfeeling company.

LISTEN TO ME!!!!!!!!

I expect a response to this letter – either written or by a phone call – within the next ten days. Do not send another dismissive, meaningless reply full of empty promises and legal excuses. Instead, please try to actually deal with the issue before you and try, just try, to satisfy my complaint. It would be a first.

Yours with thanks


David Holloway

5 comments:

Dave said...

Suddenly my recent letter of complaint to HSBC looks rubbish.

BPP said...

Nice one Dave. May I recommend, once you've dealt with these bastards, that you switch to an account with the Norwich & Peterborough? They only employ lovely people who instantly back down the moment you ring up to grumble. I've not once had cause to complain about 'em, ever.

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Anonymous said...

I work for hsbc bank and customers like you make me feel sick. do you really know how hard we work to make a living like any normal person????
We do not need customers like you who think they can talk to us like shit day in day out when the person your talking to is not the one to have caused your problem. i know for a fact that we always try to help customers and put any wrong doing right again. next time you have a problem with charges just think the only reason you got them is because you have over spent your money and not kept an eye on it like you should be doing. simple keep an eye on your money, dont be a twat and spend what you havent got and you wont go overdrawn and WONT GET CHARGES. fucking simple right.

Mark A said...

@ "Anonymous" HSBC employee. It's the OP's issue that charges were applied incorrectly and having raised a legitimate concern in a detailed and rational manner, he was fobbed off by a computer generated corporate letter which both ignored his complaint and referred him to an entirely different situation. People end up overdrawn for many different reasons and so in your post you simply demonstrate the level of astonishing judgemental arrogance that customers are sick to the back teeth of. If you don't like working in a customer facing environment for what the public perceive as a greedy corporate monster then leave. People only get annoyed and rude because of the blatant unreasonableness of charges and the "computer says no" driven response to requests and complaints. There is now no such thing as a bank manager who can make at decision and the frustration that customers experience because they cannot get any rational response from a human being is naturally vented at anonymous people in call centres. For goodness sake are you not surprised that the banks and their employees are so despised, when the government bale out the banks for their own failure to keep their house in order and then when they are given further millions to lend to businesses and individuals, they refuse to lend and spend much of that money paying executive bonuses. The level of charges is utterly unjustifiable, but sadly the Courts were too spineless to make a ruling on them and threw the matter back at Parliament, who have neither the inclination or wish to tighten regulation on the banking industry, but unless and until it is, the industry will simply carry on with it's unfair and usurious practices.