4 ms·

Now, all this is pretty bad but manageable. Shitty customer service, a shitty system, and no attempt to make amends for failing to provide a decent standard of

Now, all this is pretty bad but manageable. Shitty customer service, a shitty system, and no attempt to make amends for failing to provide a decent standard of service. But we're set up, right? Not quite. HSBC is the only bank I know that actively prevents you from using your funds by periodically just declining your card. We're a web business. Every month we pay a bunch of money to our web hosts (the brilliant EngineYard), Google Apps, AWS, etc. WE DO THIS EVERY MONTH. THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY. And every month an Indian dude calls me in the middle of my lunch, asks me to confirm a load of security questions, and then asks me to confirm the same transactions that I confirmed with him the month before that, and the month before that and EVERY MONTH SINCE OUR JOURNEY OF PAIN WITH HSBC STARTED. Meanwhile EngineYard are sending us polite emails saying "Please pay us, your card was declined." The upshot is that we have a bad relationship with our hosts. I'd imagine that HSBC's website is hosted internally, because I know for sure that if it was hosted externally it would GET TURNED OFF ONCE PER MONTH BECAUSE YOUR FRAUD PREVENTION TEAM STOPPED PAYMENT FOR IT. Three months ago I called HSBC and pointed out that this happens every month. "Ah yes Mr. Spencer, I can see that in your account. I can confirm that we will not phone you again about these transactions." Bull. Shit. Two months ago when they called back I brought it up again, in a slightly more irate manner. "Ah yes Mr. Spencer you need to speak to my colleague about that, hang on." I spoke to his colleague and explained it all AGAIN. Then they called back a few weeks ago. I explained it all again. Everything was fine, again; no fraud or unusual activity (SO WHY DID YOU CALL?). The card is fine and working, the EngineYard payment will go through, I'm told. I explain to the guy that if I ever have a phone call like this again where I have to explain, for the millionth time, why my business uses American hosting providers, I will change banks and never look back. "No, no Mr. Spencer, I'm trying to help you. You just need to speak to my colleague..." No, I don't. I've spoken to everyone. Nobody I have ever dealt with at HSBC has any respect for my time. I've repeated myself dozens of times with HSBC to no avail, at every step of the process, to different staff members who can't pass a message along to save me from having to explain it again. I tell the Indian guy that I'll leave him to resolve it. If he can't then that's fine, we'll switch banks. He calls back to say it's all resolved. A week later, an email from EngineYard. Card declined. Cheerio, HSBC.

zombocomm 14y ago
Out of all the incompetent people you mentioned, why did you feel the need to refer to another incompetent, who happened to be Indian, as the Indian dude. :( ... little things like this constantly remind me of our perception in the world.
- AYBABTME 14y ago
  It's because all those big corporations outsource their customer service to India and surrounding countries, and whenever we get a call from those outsourced agent, they're always unable to do anything because they're not given access to the big corps network. So specifying 'Indian' most likely meant that - the typical outsourced customer service - instead of being a specific rant about the nationality. It could be any other nationality if the Call Centre of this World were held somewhere else. Now I'm not saying this is appropriate or not, I'm just explaining the reference.
  - stuaxo 14y ago
    This 1,000x ! I'm always friendly to the indian guys, but it's really really frustrating that they can't answer questions for you. + there is a cultural gap, so sometimes it's hard to communicate about certain things; even though their English is good.
- Angostura 14y ago
  Hey, at least you're not fat. He hates fat women even more than Indian dudes.
- georgespencer 14y ago
  The Indian guys I speak to are never incompetent. They're always super helpful and friendly. I pointed out that he's Indian because it shows, for me, that HSBC cares more about bottom line than they do the user experience. It doesn't mean that the guy can't provide the same level of support than someone in the UK, but it does mean that a whole bunch of users are going to phone up and have problems with the accent or feel that the support team is disenfranchised from the bank, and misattribute a negative outcome of the incident to the fact that the person is Indian. Whilst I'm super cool about Indian CS I really hate phoning Sky's customer team which is based in Scotland. My family is Scottish and even then I find some impossible accents up there.

zombocomm 14y ago

Out of all the incompetent people you mentioned, why did you feel the need to refer to another incompetent, who happened to be Indian, as the Indian dude. :( ... little things like this constantly remind me of our perception in the world.

AYBABTME 14y ago
It's because all those big corporations outsource their customer service to India and surrounding countries, and whenever we get a call from those outsourced agent, they're always unable to do anything because they're not given access to the big corps network. So specifying 'Indian' most likely meant that - the typical outsourced customer service - instead of being a specific rant about the nationality. It could be any other nationality if the Call Centre of this World were held somewhere else. Now I'm not saying this is appropriate or not, I'm just explaining the reference.
- stuaxo 14y ago
  This 1,000x ! I'm always friendly to the indian guys, but it's really really frustrating that they can't answer questions for you. + there is a cultural gap, so sometimes it's hard to communicate about certain things; even though their English is good.
Angostura 14y ago
Hey, at least you're not fat. He hates fat women even more than Indian dudes.
georgespencer 14y ago
The Indian guys I speak to are never incompetent. They're always super helpful and friendly. I pointed out that he's Indian because it shows, for me, that HSBC cares more about bottom line than they do the user experience. It doesn't mean that the guy can't provide the same level of support than someone in the UK, but it does mean that a whole bunch of users are going to phone up and have problems with the accent or feel that the support team is disenfranchised from the bank, and misattribute a negative outcome of the incident to the fact that the person is Indian. Whilst I'm super cool about Indian CS I really hate phoning Sky's customer team which is based in Scotland. My family is Scottish and even then I find some impossible accents up there.