i have lost interest because of an HSBC financial adviser!!!

soledad82

hi everyone

I m not sure if i am on the right part of the forum to ask this question and please accept my apologies in advance if i should have posted somewhere else

i have an HSBC plus account and a regular saver account and a CAsh isa. i have £12 000 on my account plus and 2 weeks ago i asked my financial adviser at HSBC if i could move that money to one of the other 2 accoounts to make my money work and gain interest before i actually use all of it for buying a house this month. she said there was no point and that it was too late as the date when i get my interest had passed already...thinking she knew what she was saying i didnt do anything about it. But yesterday i got a phone call from HSBC and i asked them if she was right in telling me that it was too late to gain interest on my money, they admitted she was wrong and apologised for it, they gave me an appointement for tomorrow and sais they would do "their best" to make up for the interest i lost.

Here is my question : I am going to ask them to reimburse me the money i lost but do you think they should do something else as well(like for instance offer free account fee for a few months)?

many thanks for your replies!

YorkshireBoy

Did you have 'room' for any* additional funds in the other two accounts?

As to compensation/goodwill, if you're sure you were given false information (and didn't simply misunderstand the information you were given) just make a complaint and see what happens.


* Might be a little, but certainly not for £12,000

Scousebird_2

Were you planning on spending the entire £12,000. If you were my customer, I would of suggested utilising your ISA allowance as you can move the money out at any time (£3600 per tax year). You just can't put it back in once you've taken it out until the new tax year.

Now unfortunately, you cannot put a lump into Regular Saver and therefore this was not an option, however you would of benefited from a Flexible Saver for at least the two weeks which taken minutes to open and therefore you would of made approx £10 in interest over 14 days.

I reckon I could hazard a guess at why the adviser didn't do this and if you had said you were leaving the money there then it could of been different. Interest is accured daily on a Flexi Saver and ISA so you may of been worse off. When did you start your Account Plus-if it was within the last 9 months then you will be getting 8% credit interest on the first £1000, and 2.5% (I think) on £1,001-£2,500 then 0.01% thereafter so a Flexi Saver would of been better for you to gain more interest (it may of only been 2% or a little more, but at least it would of been better than nothing.

It's worth asking your concerns to be logged and I think that compensation awarded if any would be minimal. They may even offer a gift to say sorry and I think that would at least compensate for the misunderstanding. See what the branch manager offers.

Extant

I don't think they owe you anything other than the interest lost and an apology.

You haven't really suffered any financial loss other than the interest, so what exactly are you expecting?

Scousebird_2

BarclaysManager wrote: »

I don't think they owe you anything other than the interest lost and an apology.

You haven't really suffered any financial loss other than the interest, so what exactly are you expecting?

In a way I can respect this point of view but really the adviser should of acted in the best interests of the customer and anticipated that the funds may of been staying there for enough time to earn at least some interest. If the money does not remain in savings for more than a certain amount of time and then the customer transfers the funds then the adviser will receive nil on their target for it-doing the customer a good service should be enough but for sales orientated/focused individuals this is not always the case.

An apology is certainly due because the OP has lost out here. He asked a perfectly reasonable question to a person in a position of trust and that person was either mistaken in their product knowledge (so should of used the tools available) or just didn't want to do the work. Either way it's a poor service!

new2civvystreet

soledad82 just a question. You say you saw an advisor. Are we talking:
Financial Planning Manager,Mortgage Manager, Independant Financial Adviser, Cashier or Counsellor.

You can't use the term financial adviser for all of these, probably only for the IFA.

(Edit: I ask this because I'm currently trying to get my head around exactly what each of these can do and whether they can give 'advice' or 'information' and am curious)