Last year, after suffering through a slew of daily calls for several weeks straight, I brought an end to the HSBC marketing calls through a combination of well documented complaints and luck. You can read the back story here. I am not convinced that Hong Kong's customer service department would have cared much considering that they had no system in place to successfully end their nuisance phone calls, but it was their bad luck and my good luck that the email address that a friend gave me to use was for VIP account holders in the UK and the gentleman who read my complaint not only directed me to the correct department in Hong Kong but cared enough to inform me of how to contact their global customer services department if my issue was not resolved. When it became clear that the non-contact form that the HK colleague sent to me useless and HSBC Hong Kong was apparently ignoring their own non-contact list when harassing their customers, I was able to escalate the issue. There was a major attitude shift and suddenly the problem that I had been fighting without results for a month became a pressing issue to the HK colleague to solve.
The problem was solved for almost a year but in the past few weeks the calls started up again. I received several phone calls per day, every day but Sunday. I emailed the HK colleague to express my disappointment but never received a response, so on Friday I resorted to the other email address. Today the HK colleague sent me a response, asking for time to resolve the problem (again). I assume that the global complaints department is breathing down her neck again.
I continue to be baffled at how it is okay for HSBC HK to incessantly phone their customers. I realise that the days are long gone when banks were simply happy to have your money deposited in their holdings and now you have to pay for the privilege of using their services if your account balance isn't adequate to their standards. I remember opening my first bank account as a child and proudly depositing my allowances from chores. Now I would be afraid that if a child were to open an account, he or she would be pressured by the account manager to sign up for all sorts of added fee devouring services. I can't make any changes to my account without being forced to sit through a pushy sales talk about how I should join some sort of investment scheme. I once made the mistake of asking for more information and not only was I subjected to a round of nonsense with pretty illustrations that left me no better informed, but the weasel filled in my application and tried to coax me to sign on the dotted line, having not read anything. Now they are ringing me several times every to sign me up for their additional services. As I said before, WTF HSBC?
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