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Doomed anecdotal megathread #2


Sergio Mendacious

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2 hours ago, bAzTNM#1 said:

I did. It was a bit of a faff, but managed to get my account back in the end. Had to post screenshots to their support department.

I had a similar issue with Netflix last year. I got an email saying my account details had been changed with a stamp date and city, turned out it was Germany I believe. I tried to log in, no joy, so phoned them and it was simple. They asked me my security questions and did a system override. Really straight forward.

Edited by Kaz Hayashi
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5 hours ago, WyattSheepMask said:

I had one recently 'from' HMRC. Classic case of "go to this website and fill in the form or you won't get you £347 tax refund" stuff, and obviously all communications from from official offices start with "Hi *insert email address*"

I get shit emails like that all of the time, but only ever having an account hacked once. I've had bank card fraud too, £1200 in total. That was a shit December.

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2 hours ago, Kaz Hayashi said:

I get shit emails like that all of the time, but only ever having an account hacked once. I've had bank card fraud too, £1200 in total. That was a shit December.

Did you get it back? Somebody in Korea emptied my account a few years back and the bank refunded me immediately.

The only thing I've had hacked was my Origin Account. I got an email saying my password had been changed but I managed to reset it before they changed my email as well. I couldn't figure out how they got into it but I DID, stupidly, use the same password for everything so it was likely from MySpace being hacked.

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38 minutes ago, unfitfinlay said:

Did you get it back? Somebody in Korea emptied my account a few years back and the bank refunded me immediately.

Eventually, but it was a 3 month long fuck about. I was with HSBC, I noticed around £400 had been taken, I called them and said I have no idea about the transaction to 'Microsoft' for that amount. The bloke on the phone from the fraud dept said "do you mean the £450 that's just come out of your account?" And I said no, so basically fraud had happened again while on the phone to the fraud team, they started to investigate and put a high alert notification on my account, however the next day another withdrawal, now up to over £1200 in total. I phoned them again and the explained that the manager from the fraud team would call me back. Nothing for a week and I tried them twice in between.

long story short this went on for 2 months. Eventually the manager called me and said any transaction under £500 is classed as a discrepancy and not fraud, so they would not reimburse me. I obviously went fucking crackers and stated, fraud occurred whilst I was in the phone to them, they put a high alert on my account, further transactions occurred and I can't have my money back?

He then said feel free to complain, it's our policy and I'm the boss... pure cunt.

Anyway, is kept records, screen shots, dates, etc in order and contacted the financial ombudsman. 2 weeks later I got the lot back including £50 to say sorry.

As I say, it was a shit Christmas. But a canny good Feb.

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HSBC are the shits in general. I had to talk them through their own mortgage calculations and why the advice and suggestions they provided wouldn't work. They took 6 months to fuck about not achieving what another bank did properly in 6 weeks. 

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1 hour ago, Tommy! said:

HSBC are the shits in general. I had to talk them through their own mortgage calculations and why the advice and suggestions they provided wouldn't work. They took 6 months to fuck about not achieving what another bank did properly in 6 weeks. 

My one experience with them was trying to set up a savings account. I sent them all the anti-money laundering stuff that they asked for and they sent me back confirmation that my account was opened and all the details for it. I didn't bother setting up phone security questions, since it was a Savings Account that I could manage online, and I had no intention of taking the money out. I just started paying a wee bit of money in.

About a month later, they sent me a letter saying that they couldn't open my account because I hadn't sent them the anti-money laundering stuff. I phoned up about it and they refused to speak to me because I couldn't answer the security questions that didn't exist. They told me I had to go to my local branch, which is 20 miles away.

Instead I sent an email telling them to close my account and send me the balance. Supervisor phoned the next day, gave a half arsed apology and asked if I'd reconsider. I said no and got a cheque about a week later.

2 hours ago, Kaz Hayashi said:

long story short this went on for 2 months. Eventually the manager called me and said any transaction under £500 is classed as a discrepancy and not fraud, so they would not reimburse me. I obviously went fucking crackers and stated, fraud occurred whilst I was in the phone to them, they put a high alert on my account, further transactions occurred and I can't have my money back?

That's insane. I was down about £250 in total and the Halifax refunded it within minutes. Most of the phone call was about stopping the card, trying to figure out how they got my details and so on, but when I asked about getting anything back it was just "Oh sure. I'll put that through now. It should take about ten minutes". It was pretty easy to prove that I wasn't in Korea, like, but still...

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Yeah, HSBC are a shower of bastards when it comes to trying to get anything out of them. I'd have changed banks years ago if it weren't for the fact that I'm too lazy to actually do it, and I'm not convinced anywhere else would be any better.

Last time I had a major complaint with them, they'd put a block on my card and I couldn't use it at all. This happened two or three times, and each time I got it lifted, but on the last occasion, only a day later, it stopped working again.

I said to the person on the phone that I had been assured this wouldn't happen again, as it'd been an absolute ballache having to deal with it, and he said, "I'm sorry, sir, but this is the first time we've stopped your card". To which I pointed out that I'd phoned them however many times over the past month, including less than a week ago, about my card being stopped, so he's obviously wrong, and he condescendingly said, "No, on that occasion we had blocked your card, it is only now that we have stopped your card". Well, when the end result is that I can't use the thing, what's the fucking difference?

They told me my card had been stopped because of a suspicious transaction - I asked them what it was, and I confirmed that I had made that transaction, so can the block be lifted? No, of course not, the card's been cancelled because it was suspicious activity and it might not have been me. But it bloody was me, wasn't it, I just told them! In a later phone call they told me that it was because my card fell within a set of numerical values that represented cards that might have been cloned - I checked with a friend who worked at HSBC, who told me that this explanation was utter bollocks, and told the person on the phone as much, and they defaulted back to the earlier explanation of "suspicious activity". I asked them why, if they thought my card had been cloned by somebody in America (because the "suspicious transaction" was with an American retailer) was I unable to use the bank to withdraw money from a cash machine, as they could hardly have also stolen my pin number, flown halfway across the world, and withdrawn cash from the machine at my work, could they?

Eventually they said my card had to be replaced, and a new one would be sent to me within 14 days - I asked exactly what they expected me to do with no functioning bank card for two weeks, and they said that I could go to my nearest branch and take money out in person. I pointed out that I worked during the bank's opening hours, 45 minutes away on the bus, with an hour's lunch break, so how did they expect me to manage that? They wouldn't budge but, eventually, after speaking to three different people, in a phone call that lasted over an hour, they said they would send the card out express delivery and I would get it within 1-2 days. Well why the fuck wasn't that the default option? Why tell me it could only be sent out within 14 days, and stick to that for an hour, after I'd been complaining for weeks, only to then offer a far better option? Infuriating.

 

If I hadn't just finished dealing with Easyjet for 10+ weeks to get expenses reimbursed, I'd say HSBC had the worst customer service department I've ever experienced.

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Chalk up another grievance against HSBC. I had a Current account with them, and, in the mid-to-late 2000s when I was having severe employment and consequently financial problems, they cancelled my overdraft and said I had to pay £1,600. I had no problem with this; what you owe, you owe. What I had a problem with was how they screwed me around with the repayments. I initially worked out a payment scheme of £50 per month. However, at one point, I was on the absolute bones of my arse, and was working for a guy whose way of running his business was completely lackadaisical; he seemed to have no understanding that people need to be paid on time because they've got things worked out that rely on prompt payment. So, one month, he hasn't paid me like he's supposed to, and then swanned off on a business trip for a week, during which he's completely unreachable for no discernible reason. I finally manage to get hold of him, and he tells me he'll pay me straight away. Come Direct Debit day for my overdraft debt, and, of course, he's done fuck-all; the payment bounces. So far, nothing is HSBC's fault.

What should have happened next is that I should have got a phone call from them telling me what happened, during which I could have explained and worked things out. What I get is a phone call telling me that, because I've defaulted on that one month's payment, despite paying everything on time up to that point for eight months, I'm now liable for the entire amount straight away. It was only after a load of angry ranting that the guy finally backed down, but even then told me that they couldn't accept £50 per month like I was paying before, because, apparently, that little per month should never have been authorised. Nice. I couldn't get him to give way on that, so eventually worked it out at £75 per month.

Then the guy I was working for did it again, despite my polite-but-firm explanation of what had happened, that this wasn't acceptable, and his apologies and guarantee that there wouldn't be a repeat of it. This time, I didn't even get a phone call from HSBC, I got a call from some other company in Malaysia. Some woman asks me for my date of birth and postcode without even telling me who's calling, so I ask her to tell me that first, to which she replies: "Metropolitan". That's all. I ask her "Metropolitan what? What are you calling about?" She tells me she's calling about my bank account, but that she can't tell me any more about the company name. Obviously, I tell her that I'm not prepared to tell some stranger over the phone personal details, especially in relation to my bank account, when she can't even tell me the full name of the company she works for, so she says "Alright, we'll send you a letter instead".

I get a letter from "Metropolitan Credit Services", telling me I owe the entire balance now. Obviously I'm not entirely convinced, so I do some research, and I find out that it's basically the debt-collection arm of HSBC, set up as a shell company in Malaysia to enable them to get around UK financial services laws. I call them up, and after more ranting, make them understand that I just don't have the money to pay off straight away, and that I can only afford £75 a month, maximum. As this was also right after the credit crunch, I also go off on a tangent about how, given that the banking sector has got a bad rep right now, that they should be doing as much as possible not to be screwing customers. They grudgingly agree, and a couple of months later, I get a decently-paid full-time job, and am able to pay it off in about three months. I then went to my branch to close my account, and said directly to the manager what I thought of this practice; he apologised, in the manner of someone who'd probably had to deal with this quite a few times in recent months.

It all ended OK, but the sheer arseholery surrounding it was stressful and in a way summed up the kind of bullshit that retail banks deservedly got a shit rep for in the aftermath of the credit crunch. Right when people were vulnerable and needed help to deal with financial problems (and there were plenty of people in situations way more desperate than mine), the banks were more concerned with calling in their debts and squeezing as much out of them as they could.

Edited by Carbomb
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1 hour ago, gmoney said:

Did that fuck with your credit rating Carbomb? 

Thankfully, not too badly. Got a job at the right time, so I was lucky to avoid anything too horrendous. After a year in the job and a lot of very frugal living, I'd been able to erase all my formal debts, including my credit card which I'd got at the same time as my Current account, and I managed to get to Neutral or 0 (whatever the rating is). At the time, however, I wasn't in a good place; I'd been out of a job for ages, and didn't know when, or even if, I would get a job with above-minimum-wage income again. In London, that's particularly stressful; I was also lucky to be living with my family, but there's still a lot of expense incurred.

I shudder to think what happened to people who weren't in as recoverable a situation as I was.

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The only time I've ever had contact off of a debt collection agency, is when I was paid for a shift at a Somerfield's that I hadn't worked yet. I'm not sure how they managed it because it was a clocking in and out system, but I'd quit because I'd got a better paying/more hours summer job and they cocked up the payroll. "Nice!" I thought as I eyed up the extra £30 in my bank account and thought nothing of it. I can't remember if they asked for it back, but if they did, I didn't. About 6 months later I got a letter of off the company they sold the debt too and totally shat it thinking I was fucked, as by this time I was back at uni living in a house that was too expensive and with too many bills. I ended up doing what I used to do with all of this sort of thing back then and just totally ignored it, but assuming that was my credit fucked for life. They chased me up a couple of times again, but then stopped. I only found out years later that that sort of thing won't appear on your credit file at all.

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When they sell a debt on, it's because they can't be fucked chasing it.  The collection agency have more resources to chase it up.  I'm in shit street financially at the moment and have buried my head in the sand a lot. I know that if you reply to any letters they will pursue you more aggressively because they've found you, so to speak.  Small debts will be written off if they can't contact you but yeah, long term it does you damage.

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I didn't mean to suggest any debt won't effect your rating, only my debt to Somerfield as it wasn't a loan of any sort. I didn't mean to mislead. They did get bought out by the Co-op not long after, which I can only hope I contributed to. 

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