Locked down by the virus of Hostile Silly Bankers who don’t Care

Well, I suppose today is as good as any for a faithful customer to be left to die as far as HSBC is concerned.

Forget coronavirus for a moment and let’s look at the virus of stupidity spreading through our fabulously faceless world of technological brick walls…

We phoned the despicable HSBC bank for help after we got hacked, inexplicably, by a woman we actually know through social media. We know it’s her because she left her name!

The problem was that this ridiculous woman had purloined my Gmail account password for some reason – made off with it like some mad magpie flapping her bingo wings and flicking her tail feathers with her roly-poly arse, and cackled in the dead prairie lands of her life.

Sadly, as I have as many holes in my memory as a tennis racket, I had no idea what the password was .. a bit frustrating as, when I tried to reclaim my Gmail account by changing it, Gmail asked my for my last password!

What!

Well, surely, if I knew my last password I wouldn’t be trying to change it because I’d forgotten it!

So, after many many many failed attempts to remember it, Google banned me.

And one of the unexpected knock-on effects of this ban was that, when I went to do a little bit of on-line banking I could no longer get on there either, yep, because the account was linked to my Gmail account …

Not a problem I thought – we don’t care about the goof-balls at Google, we’ll go straight to the ‘world’s local bank’ .. yes, we could bank on them to get us back up and banking in the bat of a forgetful eye. Of course we can!

An hour and half later we found that HSBC didn’t actually give a flying spreadsheet about its customers either.

The first 30 minutes was spent listening to repetitive tin-can alley muzak occasionally interrupted by a robotic voice berating me over and over for wasting the bank’s time in a world crisis and that I’d have to wait for ages anyway and that we are all going to die and only their brilliantly wonderful working-at-home staff would survive unscathed.

Finally, the music stopped … and Gloria picked up the phone in her chintzy little safe-haven lounge and said: “Hello … how may I help you today?”

And that was the beginning of my HSBC near-death sentence.

Oblivious to what was about to happen, I explained the problem, told her we were in lockdown in a foreign country and needed access to our account to pay rent and buy food. I told Gloria we couldn’t do it because our ‘stolen’ email account was our access to our online banking!

So, we dutifully entered the identification process … she asked my name. I told her.

First mistake … my name has an unusual spelling – basically it’s spelt the girl’s way – so I spelt it out for her.

L-E-I-G-H …

She told me off … ‘I don’t need you to spell it out … “
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s an unusual spelling, I thought it might help to prove it’s me!”

“I’ll decide that,” she said from the safety of the armchair in her lounge as she sipped on her fifth penocolada and absently watched daytime TV.

Then she said: “I have more questions for you but I can only accept your first answer!”

I replied: “I thought we were trying to get life-saving funds freed for me – not taking part in a TV game show!”

She said: “I am doing this for your own protection.”

I said: “You should be helping to get my money to me, not making it more difficult then!”

You could hear her attitude begin to goose-step round her lounge.

“I can only accept your first answer.”

Next question:

Which branch do you bank at? I got it right!

What telephone number is attached to your account. I wasn’t sure .. I opened the account 20 years ago. I took a stab in the dark! WRONG!

The goose-stepping came to a deafening halt and she took aim.

“I am sorry, that is wrong.”

Me: “Oh, it must be this one then … “ RIGHT!

WRONG!

“I am sorry sir, I can only accept your first answer.”

“But that answer was right.”

“I am only doing this for your own protection sir.”

“What! Leaving me in lock down in a foreign country 2,000 miles from home without any money – that is protecting me?”

“I am sorry sir, please stop shouting at me … I am only trying to help.”

Gloria changed channels on the TV, slipped deeper into her armchair and nibbled on a cucumber sandwich.

I sat in my own prison-cell of a lounge and wondered where I was going to get the cash from to buy a loaf of bread.

***

Now, obviously in reality, we aren’t going to die from lack of funds, there are many things we can and did do.

But it is fair to say that in this time of crisis when people have so much on their minds – like staying healthy, like not dying – why is HSBC turning a straightforward action, like changing contact details for online banking in to a tawdry TV game show hosted by a robotic clerk without an ounce of intelligence beyond her robotic script and screen? And telling us how wonderful she is?

HSBC is historically particularly good at this kind of stupidity … a few weeks before we left the now-inclement shores of good old Blighty, I went in to my branch of HSBC, a small leafy country town branch, a town where everybody knows everybody.

This is what happened:

I got to the counter and the middle-aged middle-class women behind it – who has known me for twenty years and says hello to me on the street – said: “Hello Mr Banks how are you today?”

I said: “I’m very well thank you. How are you?”

She replied: “I’m very well thank you… how is Andrea and your children of course?”

“They are all fine thank you!”

“Glad to hear it … how may I help you today?”

“I would like to withdraw one hundred pounds from my account please.”

“No problem, Mr Banks… do you have any form of identification?”

“Well, yes I do … you know me very well.” I smiled.

“I’m sorry Mr Banks I need some proof of identity before I can help you … it is for your own protection!”

What a load of bankers!