HSBC Paying-in slips

ChapelGirl

I am in France and an English visitor has just received a GBP cheque for several hundred pounds which he needs to pay into his UK HSBC account. The nearest HSBC branches are each an hour away by car in opposite directions, so I've suggested he'd be much better off to post the cheque to his branch in the UK. Otherwise it's a toll charge and diesel each way!

He doesn't think he has a paying-in slip with him, and I can't seem to find any blank ones to download. All the HSBC pages talk about 'picking one up at the branch'. Is it possible to DL one? Or could he simply enclose a covering letter with his account details on it?

baby_frogmella

Just a covering letter with his sort code/account number/signature to his local HSBC branch will be ok, however on a few occasions i couldn't be arsed to write a covering letter and just wrote my sort code/account no on the back of the cheque and local hsbc branch processed it as usual

thenudeone

Pre-printed paying in slips are printed with special magnetic ink and machine-readable characters, so these can't be copied. Cheque books usually have a few at the back behind the last cheque.

The blank ones you can pick up branch probably could be copied / printed but as stated above, a letter quoting details should be okay.

However if his bank don't know he's abroad or why, it might set alarm bells ringing about whether he's still formally resident in the UK.

jfh7gwa

I've sent cheques to banks before like this, with a cover letter which clearly identified my account number, sort code, and confirmed my address/tel number in case of problems. This hasn't been for HSBC, but three other bank groups (Natwest account, HBOS and the other was for my ING account I think), never had any issues with them.

ChapelGirl

thenudeone wrote: »

However if his bank don't know he's abroad or why, it might set alarm bells ringing about whether he's still formally resident in the UK.

Why should they care either way? In fact, he's just visiting, but even if he weren't, I have 2 UK GBP bank accounts which I "brought with me" from the UK and which now have French correspondence addresses. It has never caused me a problem, and nor should it. I thought freedom of movement etc. was one of the "advantages" of being in the European Union.

alanq

Best to assume that if a bank can get it wrong it probably will.

I wrote to my bank from a temporary address in the UK (I resided elsewhere in the UK) and it updated the address on the account without me asking it to do so.

The boards have lots of posts where customer complain that their bank cards have been frozen while abroad despite having previously told the bank that they would be visiting a particular country.

callum9999

alanq wrote: »

Best to assume that if a bank can get it wrong it probably will.

I wrote to my bank from a temporary address in the UK (I resided elsewhere in the UK) and it updated the address on the account without me asking it to do so.

The boards have lots of posts where customer complain that their bank cards have been frozen while abroad despite having previously told the bank that they would be visiting a particular country.

They get frozen because the banks computers think a certain transaction is unusual and suspicious - not because they have some kind of grudge against people going abroad! A cheque arriving with a cover letter and signature from France isn't remotely suspicious (France is just as close to me as London is and in the EU - it's not as if it's an enormous cheque randomly appearing from Nigeria!) so I can't see it causing a block on the account.