HSBC UK

Appalling customer service. I applied for an HSBC Advance current account on 30th October, HSBC acknowledged my application and confirmed that they would "need to do some important checks. This may take up to 10 days". I heard nothing so I raised a formal complaint which was acknowledged with a reference on 4th December. I've since continued to receive generic, seemingly automated e-mails telling me "We are taking your concerns seriously and again, I'm really sorry for the continued delay" though the reality is I don't believe they are taking my concerns seriously and I don't believe they're sorry. This is by far the worst customer service experience I've ever received from a bank or any financial institution. At time of writing in January 2024 its now been 73 days since I applied for this current account and 38 days since I raised a formal complaint and the account is still not open and the complaint has still not been appropriately responded to.

48 days and counting... that is how long it has been since I last saw my $3200 I transfered from UK to my Australian bank. But it's not the loss of money that is the painful part, it's the process of communicating with HSBC to resolve the issue.
I gave up calling, the call centre rep in India would simply hang up once they realized the problem was too hard. Emails were ignored, so escalated to the complaint dept, Dave Anthony RIDGWAY to be precise. And here has been the single most arrogant, disinterested & unhelpful individual I've ever had dealings with. If there was ever someone stuck in the wrong job who despises customers, it's this guy.
Will I ever see my $3200 again? Who knows at this rate.

Froze my business account without warning and refuse to tell me why. Only a relationship manager get lift the hold but mine has apparently left (never spoke to me in 6 years). Now i have to wait for a new one to be assigned but until then my business must suffer and could go under. Absolute disgrace!

All within last 12 months:
Payments to airline direct booking site withheld BY HSBC twice in 24hr period when funds were available in account. Complaint to bank lead to a denial of any block in place but airline records confirmed that the bank had in fact withheld payment twice.
HSBC has an online Chat service that should permit speedy resolution of any difficulty using the bank's website. The Chat logo onscreen does not guarantee the service is in operation.
Setting up new payees is supported by the bank's mini security device generating a one-time code which has to be entered onscreen. The code may be rejected without explanation when you type it in onscreen and, if the Chat service happens to be 'resting', there is no way to set up the payee without a telephone call and multiple security questions. A long delay if one needs to make a fast payment.

A high st bank in runcorn ches uk has just robbed a vunerable person out of 5 quid, she counted the money 5 mikes away and I witnessed her count it 29 x tens and a fiver 295 quid but the lady on the till was suppose to exchange the 300 in 20's for tens? I phoned the bank and got a load of crap off the nice malat woman,? Should I call the police, i mean hsbc are reknowned by media for funny goings on, ect ect but it could be a mistake? REFUNDED

We had a very bad experience for transfering money oversea in HSBC. One bank manager helped us to transfer the money by using three weeks then told us the amount was huge so we needed to wait for another week. We cant bare with another weeks then we went to the bank again and he did not explain what was happened, And ask us try another branch. The other bank manager told us he canceled the transferring on last Friday without our consent. We did not contact him until Saturday. He said he was mistaken. How dare you can access our bank account and canceled the payment without our agreed. Sigh. I thought transferring money in this international bank would be more safer and easier., I dun know what can we right now. They already wasted a month on this issue!

This HSBC bank and its app is such a poor that you become frustrate. Never go or recommend to anybody to open any account in HSBC bank. Customer support is also such a poor that you will be in waiting queue minimum half an hour.

I've been a customer of HSBC for a while. Customer service has gone from okay, to bad, to non existent. When will they stop using covid as an excuse for bad service? Covid is gone, but wait times to contact customer service is just getting longer. I asked a simple question on the chat "service" in their phone app... 43 minutes and NO REPLY! I called them and waited on hold for 36 minutes... never spoke to anyone but a useless computer AI. I'm finished. No more HSBC. I'll find a bank that actually places a little more value on their customers. Don't waste your time with this bank. They want your money, but don't provide you with even the most rudimentary customer service. The stupid guides they provide online are absolutely NO substitute for a human being. Those who call customer service usually have a unique problem that requires human intervention. HSBC denies you that human contact.
Edit... I've since moved to a different bank. Most of the problems I had with HSBC have been solved. Avoid this scam bank at all costs... there are much better banks out there...

They had improved the login service, but today i tried to login and it said already logged in so tried to log off then loads of nonsense came up, so i gave up.

HSBC CHAT IS AWFUL. ITS JUST "FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS" PRETENDING TO BE HUMAN. WITH NO FLEXIBILITY IT GOES ROUND IN CIRCLES, SAYS ITS PLEASED TO HAVE HELPED AND CUTS YOU OFF WITHOUT OPTION OF SAYING "NO, YOU HAVN'T ANSWERED MY QUESTION". IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN TALKING TO INDIA OR PHILLIPINES. OLD STYLE FAQs ARE OK FOR SOME THINGS BUT, IF NOT LISTED, WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO TALK TO UK CALL CENTRE WHERE AGENTS UNDERSTAND ENGLISH

If I could give zero stars to HSBC Premier, I most certainly would. My recent experience has been a catalogue of disasters. They initially claimed to have sent my credit cards at the end of last month but it still hadn't arrived after 3 weeks. I then contacted HSBC "Premier" service and was dealt with by an associate who obviously is pretty ignorant & poorly trained. She declared that they could not courier the cards to me, but subsequently another associate told me that that would be no problem. In any event, the original cards arrived after 3 1/2 weeks and I had them validated over the phone. Surprise, surprise, they were declined for ALL payment transactions because they had been cancelled by HSBC. How the associate managed to validate cancelled card is still beyond my comprehension. Many, many calls and long long waits later, my new credit cards finally arrived. However, I have just received HSBC SMSs to say that there have been fraud alerts and that the transactions on my cards have been declined. All these transactions were legitimate and there seemed no reason to suspect otherwise. It seems that HSBC is hellbent on giving as much grief as possible to their (even "Premier") customers. A more pathetic, Incompetent and unprofessional bank I have yet to come across. Absolutely appalling!

I needed to speak to HSBC urgently having been made redundant to discuss mortgage options. I was placed in hold for a queue time reported as 25 minutes. 2 hours 25 minutes later still on hold the line went dead. This occurred 3 times over the next 5 days for times caring from 90-145 minutes. Eventually I e-nailed a complaint to my local MP (Who just happens to be head of the BBA) and someone at HSBC then called me being very helpful. I wrote a complaint to HSBC and the response was that if I chose to call HSBC then that was my issue as I could fill out the mortgage holiday form online and therefore like always they could not be held accountable. I wrote a further response to this highlighting I did not want a mortgage holiday and even if I did the call option was a service HSBC offer and therefore they are obligated to offer it in a transparent and fair way. At this point they gave the normal nonsense about them adding to statistics to improve customer service. As this is one of many issue with HSBC arrogant attitude to customers I pushed this no further and have now opened an account elsewhere while I shut down my HSBC accounts. I suggest everyone else do the same if you want any form of customer service and competent services at that too.

Words just cannot describe just how bad this bank is! I would never recommend them to anyone! Not even my worst enemy!

After being an HSBC UK customer for 8 years, they froze my account for being inactive/dormant after a few months (I hadn't used it in a while), and also froze my telephone banking for some reason. I don't currently live in the UK, so could not go into a branch in person to "verify my identity".

After calling for 6 months and repeatedly asking for a letter/code to unfreeze my telephone banking (in order to then re-open my dormant account), no letter came. When I called, the customer service agents could not confirm the address they were sending the letter to for "my security", because my telephone banking was frozen. I would later find out that they were sending the letter (WITH SECURE INFORMATION) to the wrong address. But they could not tell me this. If this sounds Kafka-esque and ridiculous and illogical, trust me, it was.

I went into an HSBC US branch and begged them to call the UK bank to get my account unfrozen. After an hour on the phone, we were able to get my telephone banking unfrozen, but not my dormant account reactivated, because they have bizarre address and ID confirmation policies (what they are trying to confirm, I don't understand, because all of the addresses are easily changeable either on their website or through my other banks).

No policies are consistent. None of their staff seem to know or understand their policies for basic things like unfreezing an account. I would absolutely NEVER recommend this bank to anyone. I will likely be closing my account after I get it unfrozen (it still isn't).

Been on the phone over 1 hour and 20 minutes on a call asked to speake with a manager and was refused

Spoke to MAYA earlier and she cut off the phone.
USELESS SERVICE, THEY LIED CONSTANTLY. BAD KARMA FOR THOSE WHO LIED.