Household HSBC Watch

Sun Jul 17, 2005 1:50 pm      

Over the last couple of years HSBC-Retail services has been sending my bill to my next door neighbor, instead of to me. When my neighbor gets it she gives it to me when she sees me next. That was when they even bothered to send me my bill at all... I had called them to make sure that they had my address correct... and they still sent the letters and bills to the wrong address. I had sent them a Check on June 10th 2005 and on the 28th I had gotten several calls from them. I told them I had already sent the check out and the lady on the other end told me that that was impossible because they hadn’t gotten it and it didn’t take 18 days for a letter to go from Ohio to Illinois.

I told her I knew that, and could they look in their mail room because I knew I had sent it. She said she couldn’t do that. She told me I needed to make a payment by phone, and said that the charge for that was $15. I told her that I would not do that since it was probably their fault that it was lost, and that I knew that as soon as I did pay them by phone that they would "miraculously" find and cash the payment I had sent them. I asked them if I made the payment by phone would they throw away (void) the check when they found it. She said no, that they would cash it. I told her that it was ridiculous.

I told her I would make sure that they got their next payment, but until they could give me some assurances of what they would do with the "missing" check I wouldn’t be sending them another unless they were going to pay for the cancellation charge of $31 that my bank charges. She said that they could not do that. I told her I was going to continue to check my account to see if it cleared.

A couple of weeks after that on July 8th, a man called me from HSBC-Retail Services. I told him that I had already talked to someone from his department and that they were supposed to have noted the conversation. He had a heavy accent and I could barely understand him and had to keep asking him to repeat what he said, and kept asking him to talk slower. When I could finally understand what he was saying I told him that I had already told one of their people that I had sent a check out. He told me that was not possible since they didn’t have it. I asked him if he was calling me a liar, and he said no, but it was just not possible for me to have sent a check to them. I responded so you are saying that I am a liar. He was getting ruder and ruder by the minute. Kept telling me that what I said couldn’t be true. After about twenty minutes of him getting ruder, I told him I had to go. I had a class I had to leave for, he kept arguing with me and told me I had to do something. I told him again, I had to go. When he refused to end the call I hung up on him.

I called their complaint center and told them I didn’t appreciate them having someone who could barely speak English calling me and yelling at me. I also told the lady that I really did not appreciate the way that their employee called me a liar. I told her I expected her to take care of the problem and note in my file that if someone calls me, they needed to speak CLEAR understandable English, instead of flipping back and forth between whatever language and English. How was I to know whether or not they were saying obscenities if I could not understand them.

I asked the lady if there was any other way besides pay-by-phone or check to make my payments. She said they had an online payment center. Told me how/where to access it. After everything, I made most of the payment they were asking for minus the amount of the check I had sent. I asked that lady if she would assure me that she would not cash the check if I paid everything online, she refused to do so as well. I was trying to work with them, and they would not do it.

So they have messed up my address,
not sent me my bills regularly,
sent me bills late,
gotten nasty with me,
told me that the post office haven’t delivered the checks,
and have generally acted with poor business manners.

I will NEVER get another account with them. I would rather do with out than ever have another credit card from them.