HSBC Bank account closed for undisclosed reasons & large sum seized

musehead

I had a surprise on Friday when my debit card was not working so logged onto my internet banking to find my current account had disappeared! After enquiring by phone it turns out my account has been closed with no reason given. According to them a letter was sent so I went and opened a load of statement-looking letters which had accumilated as i've been out of the country for most of last month. My mistake of course for not opening them sooner, but this is the last thing I would expect - my credit history is perfect, i've had this account for 5 years and never had any problems.

Reference: AFACLOSE/LETOUT

Dear musehead

Re: Account Number: xxxxx

Following a recent review of your account(s) we regret to advise you that you no longer wish to provide you with banking facilities. We are therfore formally providing you with 30 days notice of our intention to close your account(s) on 5 November 2009. Any previously agreed overdraft facilities have now been withdrawn.

[...]

Upon the expirt of this notice period your account(s) will be closed and once we are satisfied that there are no outstanding transactions or liabilities (including fees and charges) on your account(s) we will send you a cheque for any net credit balance.

[...]

We would be grateful if you could return your cheque books and cards to us as soon as possible using the enclosed pre-paid envelope. For security reasons please first cut the cards in half.

A phone number is given for queries and the letter is simply signed "Manager".

After several phone calls to the given phone number and normal customer service it appears my local branch manager is responsible for the order to close my account, but he seems very hard to contact. I went into the branch on Friday and was promised a return call on Monday (they refused to talk to me at the time because the queue for the cashier was too long). I also rang this morning to try and get put through to the branch but all they could do was say the manager would ring me back. It's past business hours now and no phone call has been received.

They also said that the manager might choose not to tell me why my account was closed, apparantly they have no obligation to do so.

The most annoying part of this is that I had perhaps the highest balance i've ever had in my current account at the time it was closed as I was planning to put it into a NS&I bond. A transaction dated 6th November and labelled "BALANCE TO CLOSE" debited just over £99,000 from my account. It was 3 days ago that HSBC seized the best part of £100k from me and I still have no explaination as to where the money has gone and when I might get it back, other than a notice (without timescale) that they will send me a cheque. Had the bond been opened as planned i'd be earning 3.95% on that money now.

But what if i'd been approaching the deadline for a house deposit, or a debt repayment? Surely HSBC can find the time to phone a customer back who had £100k frozen in the system without explaination. Does this not count as an important issue to them? This is bad customer service to the extreme.

Regarding reasons for it being closed, all I can speculate is that I have used it a lot for gambling transactions and also use it a lot as a base account to move money between different savings accounts. All my regular bills and cash withdrawals are also from this account. Never been overdrawn, no T&Cs broken or anything. Only bank charge was one I had about 5 years ago from a returned direct debit.

I will visit the branch again tomorrow :rolleyes:

gt94sss2

musehead wrote: »

Regarding reasons for it being closed, all I can speculate is that I have used it a lot for gambling transactions and also use it a lot as a base account to move money between different savings accounts. All my regular bills and cash withdrawals are also from this account. Never been overdrawn, no T&Cs broken or anything.

Your account activity will probably have been flagged up by HSBC as potentially being used for money laundering, fraud or for business use (on a personal account).

In 2006, they announced they were going to review 300,000 accounts..

See this, this and this for older threads/links.

Apparently, its possible to appeal their decision if you wish to do so..

Regards
Sunil

musehead

Thanks for the links.

I can't believe how rude they are. Two failed promises to phone me and two visits to the bank when the manager is "too busy" to talk, i've had to book an appointment with them tomorrow.

I lieterally can't believe they've confiscated £100k and are not even bothered to talk to me about it.

Rafter

By law if they suspect money laundering they are very limited in what they can tell you.

The activity on your account would look very suspicious in my view and gambling transactions can sometimes be a strong indicators of money laundering activity.

You can approach it in two ways. Either reassure HSBC that the transactions are legit and find out what their policy is to see if you can comply. Or create a scene, still have your account close and move on to the next bank who will probably treat you no better!

R.

dianauni

On two occasions recently my debit card has not worked and I was not able to buy food for the weekend nor petrol, had to leave all my shopping in supermarket! Apart from being very inconvenient as I do like to eat it was embarrassing with a queue of people behind me waiting whilst the cashier tried my card in the machine a couple of times, to no avail.

And the reason for this, I had on the first occasion used my card on a gaming site for the first time and the bank thought it might be a fraudulent transaction. Could they not have phoned to ask me I queried. That, it seems, was too much to expect.

On the second occasion they stopped my card because I had used it twice on the internet, once for 50p placing an ad in a well known local paper and secondly for £1.00 postal charges on another site. Their reasoning? I had never used either site before. I told the girl that with it coming up to Christmas it was quite likely I would be shopping via sites I had never used before and were they going to stop my card after every transaction?

I have written to the bank about this and await their reply - not HSBC - let's just say that I doubt very much that Fred the Shred ever had HIS card stopped!!!

opinions4u

If you had recently deposited a large amount, I would suggest that you take any documentation proving the source of funds to your meeting tomorrow (e.g. letter that came with a cheque, bank statement showing the withdrawal etc). The more you can provide, the better.

It may save you having to do the same at a later date.

gt94sss2

dianauni wrote: »

On two occasions recently my debit card has not worked and I was not able to buy food for the weekend nor petrol, had to leave all my shopping in supermarket! Apart from being very inconvenient as I do like to eat it was embarrassing with a queue of people behind me waiting whilst the cashier tried my card in the machine a couple of times, to no avail.

I have written to the bank about this and await their reply - not HSBC - let's just say that I doubt very much that Fred the Shred ever had HIS card stopped!!

It makes sense to always have a spare credit/debit card handy just in case your bank blocks your card for any reason, has technical issues like HBoS recently or the Visa/Mastercard network goes down.

However, some banks are much better at identifying fraudulent transactions and/or contacting you to query them - while others are a lot worse.

HSBC are supposed to be one of the better ones in this regard - I believe where possible they check 100 percent of their UK debit/credit card transactions in real time which is more than other banks do.

I think banks do find cards with transactions from gaming sites and/or retailers like itunes are more likely to suffer from fraud, hence a banks systems flagging them up

Regards
Sunil

lilysgarden

HSBC are rubbish, both at treating long term customers respectfully and at flagging up potential fraudulant card use. I was able to use my card abroad to buy a very expensive watch for my mum (HSBC kindly refused my dads card at that transaction even though he had more money in his account and called them from the shop to confirm the transaction could go through!), but failed to prevent a fake loan company taking £100 from my account.

Personally, I'm recommending anyone daft enough to have a HSBC account does themselves a favour and ditches this bank before they are further screwed over by them!!!

jambosans

lilysgarden wrote: »

HSBC kindly refused my dads card at that transaction even though he had more money in his account and called them from the shop to confirm the transaction could go through!

Having more money in an account has nothing to do with monitoring debit card transactions for fraud. Also, most banks won't let you pre-inform of an upcomming debit card transaction. Generally speaking this would undermine their sophisticated fraud monitoring technology*.

lilysgarden wrote: »

failed to prevent a fake loan company taking £100 from my account.

How did you find out it was a fake loans company?

lilysgarden wrote: »

Personally, I'm recommending anyone daft enough to have a HSBC account does themselves a favour and ditches this bank before they are further screwed over by them!!!

Strange, if you have a look around (on MSE), HSBC are generally held in quite high regard in comparison with the other Big Four.

*HSBC have invested in SAS Fraud Management, which appears to be rather cutting edge.

noah271007

Imagine this scenerio. I am profoundly deaf and don't speak on phone but do text and email. Went out shopping and found my card has been declined. It would be impossible for the bank to speak to me verbally to confirm i have attempted a transaction and to confirm personal details as i have a hearing impairment. What would be the solution?

noah271007

So far, i never had any problems, but i know one day it will probably happen particularly while aboard. What would be the solution?