Advice needed

philuws

Back in Sept last year I went into my HSBC bank as I needed to transfer some money overseas as I was looking to purchase some land in Bulgaria and needed to move the money to my agents bank account as you can only bring so much into the country yourself.

I gave them the correct bank details (about a week before I was due to go to Bg) of the account they needed to move to and thought no more about it and expected as advised by the bank and my agent who has done this for several English people that the money would reach his account within 5 days.

Arrived in Bulgaria a week later and it hadn't arrived. It still hadn't arrived by the end of the visit and my agent had discovered that they had transferred it to the wrong bank account. I arrived bank in England to try to find out what the hell was going on and discovered that that its actually Royal Bank of Scotland who transfer my moneyon behalf of HSBC as HSBC(the worlds global bank - haha) dont have a branch in Sofia.

In the end it took 5 weeks for the money to arrive safely in my agent account.

The problem was that my agent had to lend me money to set up a Bulgarian company (foreigners are permitted from buying land) and we couldn't go into pre contract on the land I wanted, which was about 7/8 euros at the time I was there.

Sure enough by the time the money had arrived the land had gone up to 12 euros a sq m and the error which RBS admitted to ( a simple keying in error apparently) had cost me over £3000.

I complained to HSBC who then in turn tried to complain to RBS. I have a final response from RBS today, months after I first complained and they have rejected it as follows:

'As we were not made aware of the nature of the underlying transaction and
could not have foreseen the consequences of the payment being delayed, we
are therefore not obliged to pay any form of compensation/refund any
consequential loss.'

To me this seems a very weak and poor reply for a complaint that has been dragging on for ages. I thought I'd at least get the cost of my flights back. I allowed them the chance to put things write and provided them with details of my agent in Bulgaria to confirm everything and copies of my passport with the Bg stamp and flight details and then they finally decide to check with their legal department who declined it on the above.

Anyone know whether its worth taking this ombudsman. Bit of unusual complaint so not sure where I stand.

Any advice/tips on how to best to progress this would be appreciated.

Thanks

Phil

Walletwatch

Hi Phil

An unfortunate thing to happen, and something that you should definitely take up with an ombudsman, if it does come to the need for escalation.

One query that I do have however, is how aggressively have you taken this up with HSBC itself? Firstly, you bank with them, and as such, they would / should be more forthcoming than RBS, when it comes to making good your loss, as they have your custom. I am not saying that it isn't RBS's fault, but you shouldn't have to take the pains to complain with them, you should be hollering at HSBC for compensation, and let them deal with RBS directly. After all, it is HSBC that chooses it's correspondents, when it comes to sending money to a particular destination, you never asked them to route it through RBS. These are decisions taken by Banks, based on the best deal they get with their correspondents, etc. so I marvel at your patience in liaising with RBS, who is not at all in the picture, when it comes to your relationship with HSBC.

Which also brings me to my second point. As you correctly point out, HSBC call themselves the world's global bank, and it is based on our perception of their global reach that we as customers go to them to initiate money transfers to remote locations across the world. If such a transfer were to get lost / delayed, the ownership should fairly and squarely rest with HSBC and no one else.

Don't know how seriously you've taken this up with HSBC. If I were you, I'd write in detail to the Branch manager demanding compensation and copy the letter to the Head of Customer Services and maybe Sir John Bond, Chairman of the HSBC group.

(Make it a point to mention the cc: at the bottom of the letter if you send in a hand-written or a typed one. Its amazing how much prompt action you can elicit by conveying to a branch manager that his super bosses are aware of the scr*wup and they are watching.)

If you think nothing more can be achieved by talking to HSBC, without any doubt, take it up with an ombudsman, but again, IMO, your complaint should be against HSBC and not RBS.

Best of luck.

P.S. I am surprised HSBC even mentioned that RBS were responsible for the botch-up - sounds so unprofessional and childish - I mean you can mention it in passing, and say, however, we will make good your loss for you, as we value your custom, but in this case, it seems to be a group of kids having caught behaving badly, and pointing fingers at each other !!! They get a big zero out of ten for professionalism in this case from me.