Da Nang and the HSBC shits - 31/03/2016

For the few days in Da Nang before we left for Da Lat, I was near enough holed up in the hotel or confined to the near vicinity. My cold had taken a strong grip on me since I had returned from Hue and the heat outside combined with the blinding daylight made every venture out more unpleasant that it should have been. To try and make things a little more interesting and to take advantage of the position of my room over looking a busy road I attempted to buy a new piece of software to enable me to compose a time lapse video compilation of some of the places I would be visiting during the remainder of the trip. The download dutifully failed.

I tried again, it failed again. 

I tried via the Macbook, which of course is never as easy as you'd want it to be, but after trying 3 separate browsers as well as repeated times directly to the camera, I checked my account settings on the sony website, only to see my transactions as having failed, and my debit card details as being "incorrect". 

The HSBC branch in Da Nang lay a 20 minute walk from the hotel, but knowing that there was going to be the best chance of finding out what was going on, I suffered to walk there with eyes streaming down from behind my sunglasses.  At the ATM outside the branch I took a photo of my card  fearing that the machine might take it before popping it in the slot and submitting a balance request,

The words "Transaction Cancelled" don't really tell you much, unless you have been through this before, but it's basically telling you that your account has been stopped. Once again through no fault of my own HSBC had landed me in the shit. The 2nd time in 2 months after being unable to use it at arrival in Taiwan and the 3rd time if you include the previous visit to Vietnam.  

Walking into the HSBC branch I was directed towards the young lady sat at the desk to my right and proceeded to give her the card with the slip of paper that had been printed out of the ATM. She indicated that the card has been blocked by my bank and gave the card back to me expecting me to leave. I asked politely if they could ring the helpline so I could get the card unblocked, a process which whilst still ultimately frustrating, would have seen the problem resolved in a matter of minutes. 

"No" she said,

"you are only an advance holder. We can only do that for Premier Accounts."

I started to see red, but tried to stay calm and just clarify the situation "So you won't ring? How am I supposed to get the access to my money?". Calmly she turned the card over and pointed to the number on the back of the card. "ring them" she said

"Can you just call?" I asked, indicating that I had no means to make the call myself.

"No" was their response. 

I think I forgot to say "thank you. 

On the way back to the hotel I started to rant on to HSBC on Twitter and Facebook, but with my vision not being up to scratch, I had to try again back at the hotel. The sim card I had in my possession could be used for data but not phone calls, and with no way to immediately get hold of extra cash, I was not really keen on spending more money that might be required to get food in a diabetic emergency in order to  hopefully get my card unblocked again and ready for use.

The twitter conversation continued, as did a reply from the Facebook account where I was invited to send them an email which I dutifully did explaining my frustrations. To that end they logged a complaint and told me that I would get a reply to their investigation in due course, but nothing to indicate that they were looking at unblocking my card.

Twitter was starting to yield better results, finally with the person dealing on the helpline understanding what a predicament they had put me in and giving me a number to call, reverse charge to get the card unblocked.

Now, from what i can gather, and this is the really frustrating part, is that the card had been stopped for unusual amounts going out on that card, with them failing to understand that the unusual amounts were actually very usual when converted into the currency of the ATM's in the locations that these amounts were being withdrawn, and besides, what the hell is an unusual amount anyway? 

Worse though is that on every occasion that my cards have been stopped, I have had no notification either by text or email that anything is amiss. Just frustration when you try to access your money that you need to access in a certain circumstances being unavailable as your account is being micromanaged by a bunch of over enthusiastic button pushers, with absolutely no concept of the avoidable predicament that they are putting a solo traveller with a potentially fatal medical condition in because they want to be seen as being in charge. It's mind blowingly messed up.

And of course, that's not forgetting the frustration and blood pressure peak that was caused by having an HSBC branch point blank refuse to help with the a problem from a HSBC customer, because I don't feel the need to have the word "Premier" plastered across my card or pay extra for the privilege, meaning that I am, in the eyes of HSBC a sub species of account holder not worthy of any of their time in getting a problem they caused, resolved. Once telephone contact had been made with the faceless HSBC fraud squad, the cards were unblocked in minutes, a fact I checked by going to an ATM much closer to the hotel, and praying the card didn't get eaten.

I will be closing all my accounts with HSBC when I return to the UK. I have had all manner of accounts with them over the last 20 years but in my eyes at the moment. They are just utter shits.

.......and I still haven't download the software I wanted.

So here's a picture of something else