Dear sir
I recieved a notify that informs me that I had money transfer in HSBC bank & asked me to send them 1700$ because of British board of internal Revenue
I need your advice plz
Name : ashraf al sayed nawar
the e-mail I recieved from HSBC bank PLC South East london on
5-6-2009 signed by authorizer Donald Hitchcock

I request that my credit card account be closed and I paid my final bill. I am looking at my credit status and your company is putting false information on my report, stating closed at your request. I am respectfully asking that you change the status immediately or I shall take action.

I signed up for a credit card from HSBC at the World Series in Tampa to get a free towel. This was October 23, 2008. I just got a credit card bill in the mail for $29.95, almost 4 months after the fact. The $29.95 was for a subscription to Sports Illustrated which I had no idea I was signing up for. Even if it was in the fine print that I didn't read, I would not expect a bank or Sports Illustrated to have to resort to this type of deceptive practice. Weak. Unfortunately this type of stunt is getting common even among reputable companies. This is not going to help our economy. I'm done complaining and now I am going to get back to my honest days work for an honest days pay.

Don’t bank with HSBC
– They will lock you out of your account and bleed you dry with fees while you watch them!

For all those who are considering opening a personal bank account with HSBC... THINK AGAIN!!!

To put it politely, HSBC are the biggest bunch of rip-off artists I know. Bordering on criminal. WHY?

Let me highlight my personal banking experience with them, you can decide their integrity.

I’m based in Australia. I opened an off-shore account with them 2 years ago. Deposited some money and made transactions for the first year. I registered for internet bank and they also sent me an ATM card. All is well so far. They send me monthly statements showing me any transactions and the closing balance.

Then apparently in September 2008, they changed the off-shore account policies to increase the service fees to ridiculously high levels.

In the mean time I had not made any transactions in the last 6 months and they decided to deactivate my account. NO NOTIFICATION TO TELL ME MY ACCOUNT HAD BEEN DEACTIVATED, DEEMED DORMANT. All the while, they have been sending me statements, showing me how much they were deducting from my account, deemed as “service fees”. So in the last 6 months I had not paid much attention to these statements because I assumed I could have access to the account and withdraw the money anytime I wished.

NOT SO.

I went back online and tried my usual log-in on internet banking and access was denied. Then I made a call to HSBC Singapore call centre to ask why. They specifically told me that online access has been discontinued because I haven’t used it for a while. So to withdraw any money out I have to write & post in to them instructing them to TT my money out of the account to another account. This would conveniently delay the process to the next service fee withdrawal, which they deem to be for security reasons. They did ask if I had phone banking, and I didn’t; nor did they bother to register me at the time. And at this stage, the call centre person did not notify me my account had altogether been deactivated. So the only way I thought of to get my money out quickly before they sucked more from my account was to use the ATM card. I located a HSBC ATM teller and tried my card. To my surprise, the ATM denied access to my account as well!!!

The next day I called these idiots and told them now I have absolutely NO ACCESS TO MY MONEY IN THEIR ACCOUNT. They asked me all the same questions again, “do you have phone banking”; security questions to verify that I am the real ME. I explained to them the situation and they refused to do anything about my predicament citing banking policies!!! Now this is one lesson everyone should learn: HSBC policies are there to protect THEM, NOT YOU, the customer. THEY ARE ALSO THERE TO RIP YOU OFF... yes, no secret there. They want to make money from you, anyway possible. And their policies have slimey loop-holes to screw the customers. So after 30 minutes on the phone, the useless call centre girl couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything. I tried escalating the issue to her manager but she refused to do so, all the while patronising me by saying she understands.

So here is the synopsis. I banked with HSBC. They changed their account policies. Deactivated my account citing that it was dormant for 6 months or more. Failed to inform me. Raised the service fee. Revoked my online and ATM access. In fact revoked any access to my account unless I write and post to them at my own cost. Delay the process to transfer my money to another account. Charge me more fees for this. Then finally closed my account.

If you want money in their bank that subjected to these kinds of T&Cs, you might as well put it in their pockets directly.

HSBC. You are a bunch of unscrupulous rip off merchants. May you fall with the financial crash this year.

GM MasterCard has got Earnings program. The earned points can be used to pay if buying or leasing GM car. The program can be useful (while many restrictions still prevent using the points in full amount).

It looks like a problem emerged recently: too many earnings points have been accumulated by so many users for so many years that the bank cannot hold the promises. It seems they are looking for ways how to reduce the earnings debts.

Unfortunately, my personal example demonstrates that they decided to choose very questionable methods to resolve the problem - setting up customer to confiscate the earned points.

In my particular case the followings amazing story happened. Almost three months ago, somebody changed mailing address listed on my account, without noticing me or asking for my authorization. When I tried to complain by phone, it turned out that phone password has been set for my account too, and I do not know the password. I have no ideas who, when, and for what reason made this passward.

In the phone conversation followed, a "security service personnel" shocked me asking to present explicitely my SSN. I prefer to follow common security rules - never disclose SSN by phone. There were few other fraudulent questions from their side.

In other words, they actively pushed me to start complaining, and provoking to close the account. I requested the closure. Amazing point was a reaction of the officer, who immediately agreed to do that (while normally this is pretty hard to close credit cards, as we all know, since agents try to keep customers). Another amaizing point was that in addition to closing the card, they suggested to block any activity on the account (on the account that doesn't exis anymore!) until identifying my personality.

So, eventually, I was asked to send them few utility and banking statements to confirm my identity. I send the corresponding paperwork immediately. No response from GM card followed in few weeks. I called them back, and they said that one of the statements doesn't go (no comments or explanations why). I had sent them ones again few other statements. They were slow again... And just about 70 days after I called them for the first time, I've got a letter form GM card asking to contact the security office.

I called GM card security service, and they informed me that my identity had been confirmed. They suggested to close my account (ones again?) and to recreate the account as a new one. This sounds great. But the point is that my earnings accumulated with the previous account cannot be transferred to the new one! More accurately, I would be still able to use the earnings, but only during three months after I request closing the account.

Now the situation became clear to me. Look, who benefited from a stupid action, like changing my address on the account? Nobody? Except for the GM card, who used it to confiscate my earnings. Everything in the situation was set up to make it. Indeed,

(1) they provoked me to close the account by making impression that the address change fraud originates exactly from the GM card office.

(2) They havent informed me about the earnings loss after three months of the account closing.

(3) They artificially delayed the start of the fraud case and the release of the new card, by imitating my identity check, for almost three months.

(4) For all the three months after account closing, I was made to be unable to use my earnings. To use the earnings, one needs to pay with GM card, not other payment method authorises earnings use. The GM card office made everything to block using my GM card for that critical time interval.

(5) In discussion, they agreed for everything, except for returning my earnings.

From one, it looks like everything is in accourdance to the rules, and no violations are obviouse. On the other hand, my earnings money are stolen. I hope that the investigation will identify who originated the process by changing my address (and possibly by setting unauthorized phone password).

Please let me know if you could find any other feasible explanation of the situation. Except for deliberate fraud, which was set up by GM card with respect to 9-years customer of the bank.