HSBC Bank account has been frozen

notveryeducated

Fergus10 said:

Sounds very similar to my experience. Bizarrely my bank account was 'unfrozen' 3 weeks after it had been frozen with no verbal or written explanation from HSBC (how can that be right?). 

You're lucky they just blocked it. Some banks just immediately close the account upon suspicious activity and make people wait months for their money. Even though you did nothing wrong you got off lightly. 

Fergus10

Update to my original post of my bank account being frozen over Xmas & NY – 

 After just over 3 weeks my bank account was ‘unfrozen’ with no verbal or written explanation provided. I waited for several months for some form of contact to be made & it never was. I then sent a 5-page email to HSBC to complain & sent a similar email to the Financial Ombudsmen. On the 07.05.20 I received a very unsatisfactory & unsympathetic response via email from a ‘Customer Advocate’ from HSBC regarding me ‘contacting again about the inhibit placed on your accounts’  & that ‘my colleague **** did reply to your previous complaint dated 24 December 2019 and you mention this in your letter’. That letter from ‘her colleague’ was dated 30.12.19 in response to my visiting the branch on the 24.12.19 to complain, but she forgot to mention the letter that I was told on the 23.12.19 was in the post to me that subsequently various members of HSBC kept telling me was on it’s way to me. Funny that this letter never arrived!!

 She then elaborated by saying ‘I appreciate that you may not agree with our actions; however, I hope you will understand that these are a necessary part of the management and practices by which we operate our business. As such, we will not enter into any further communication relating to the reason we have taken this action’. She then proceeded to mention a ‘review’ of my bank account that had never been mentioned to me before telling me ‘this does form part of the terms and conditions of holding an account with us and as a bank we reserve the right to review any bank accounts that are held with us’. 

This ‘Customer Advocate’ from HSBC then provided completely inaccurate information about my calls to HSBC as though they were fact stating ‘I know the reason you kept calling was to gain access to your funds, however, there is no one in our front line who could have made this process happen any quicker. It was explained to you several times that the bank was completing a review’. I did not ring HSBC solely to access funds, but primarily find out what was going on with my bank account & why it being investigated which I think was perfectly understandable in the circumstances. It was NEVER explained to me at any point that the bank was completing a review. The word review was never used by anybody I spoke to at HSBC. I was just repeatedly told that ‘We are unable to process any transactions or requests as the bank is currently complying with its Statutory requires & the bank will be in touch in due course”.

 

This Customer Advocate then had the cheek to say ‘ I would be happy to offer you £150.00 for the service you received as it should have been made clear from the first call there is no timescales provided for an account review, and access would be returned once completed’ & ‘I know you remain unhappy and have since moved your account, we wouldn’t wish to put anyone in a stressful situation intentionally, however, we do have the right to complete this review’.

So after the stress & worry they put me through this is their poor excuse for a response. I fully intend to pursue this further with the financial ombudsman & I have no intentions of accepting the £150 off them, it’s an insult after what they put me through over Christmas & New Year.

abz88

Fergus10 said:

Update to my original post of my bank account being frozen over Xmas & NY – 

So after the stress & worry they put me through this is their poor excuse for a response. I fully intend to pursue this further with the financial ombudsman & I have no intentions of accepting the £150 off them, it’s an insult after what they put me through over Christmas & New Year.

Glad that your account was finally re-opened, however, I am not sure what you are expecting from the financial ombudsman? Your account has been re-opened and they have offered compensation, what else are you expecting the ombudsman to do?

Fergus10

I wouldn't call £150 compensation as they are not acknowledging what they did was wrong. I'm not accepting the £150 anyway. I expect the FO to fully look into this as HSBC's version of events is very different from what actually happened & the language & terminology they now use for what I was told & for what happened is also very different from the reality. 

Yorkshire_Pud

How much would you accept?
I would contact hsbc and ask for an improved offer say £250 plus phone calls and then agree to close the case if they agree.

If you want to spend the next however many months arguing with hsbc after five months already with anger and probably high blood pressure that’s up to you.

The fact they followed procedure after an alert was triggered can’t be held against them even if it caused you a lot of problems. Never keep all your eggs in one basket.

You come across as very angry no doubt hsbc felt this as well. Maybe the ombudsman would feel this too. 

So how much money is enough compensation?

If such a situation happens to me I’m sure I will feel angry too but in similar type of situations I reach a point where I say it’s not enough but it’s something and now time to put it to bed and move on (with a new bank, I mean at least two new banks).

Fergus10

Yorkshire_Pud said:

How much would you accept?
I would contact hsbc and ask for an improved offer say £250 plus phone calls and then agree to close the case if they agree.

If you want to spend the next however many months arguing with hsbc after five months already with anger and probably high blood pressure that’s up to you.

The fact they followed procedure after an alert was triggered can’t be held against them even if it caused you a lot of problems. Never keep all your eggs in one basket.

You come across as very angry no doubt hsbc felt this as well. Maybe the ombudsman would feel this too. 

So how much money is enough compensation?

If such a situation happens to me I’m sure I will feel angry too but in similar type of situations I reach a point where I say it’s not enough but it’s something and now time to put it to bed and move on (with a new bank, I mean at least two new banks).

Thank you for your reply.  This is where written communication can be misinterpreted. I am not "very angry" at all, far from it. I was obviously very upset and worried at the time though.  If HSBC & the Financial Ombudsman interpret me as being "very angry" that's unfortunate & the least of my concerns. I have every right to pursue a complaint with them if I so wish. 

I have "moved on" a long time ago & I opened another bank account in early January following very helpful advice on this forum. 

I am not pursuing this further for money, that is not my motivation. If it was I'd accept that £150. I feel that it was very wrong how I was treated & more so now that they have lied in their reply about what actually happened. I'll reply to their email but I wont be contacting them again & in fact I stopped ringing them in January as it was pointless. I believe they should explain to their customers why they are investigating/reviewing someone's bank account & the reason for this. Clearly in my case there was nothing of concern as surely they'd have closed my bank account but that didn't happen. 

I only put an update on this matter on here as a few people asked me to do this when I first posted this thread. That is the only reason, for those people to find out what happened & also as it might help somebody else be aware of what the banks can do. 








2

eskbanker

Fergus10 said:
I am not pursuing this further for money, that is not my motivation. If it was I'd accept that £150. I feel that it was very wrong how I was treated & more so now that they have lied in their reply about what actually happened. I'll reply to their email but I wont be contacting them again & in fact I stopped ringing them in January as it was pointless. I believe they should explain to their customers why they are investigating/reviewing someone's bank account & the reason for this.

Trouble is, once something has happened to trigger suspicion under anti money laundering legislation, they aren't allowed to explain this - this would be regarded as 'tipping off' and is an offence in itself.  Of course it's a simple human reaction to seek explanations and timescales, but HSBC (as with all the others) are prevented from disclosing either, so as far as that's concerned they were doing it by the book.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending them, and clearly some of the communication wasn't as it should have been, which is why they've offered the compensation, i.e. it's in response to what their staff may have said (or failed to say) to you, rather than any concession about the investigation process itself.  Obviously their staff should be trained to ensure that they relay a consistent and accurate message, even if they're prevented from telling the customer what they'd like to hear, but when customers contact multiple parts of the organisation in desperation, it's perhaps not a huge surprise that there are variations from the script.

So, if you feel that £150 isn't adequate recompense for their communication lapses, then there's nothing stopping you from pushing for more, but if you believe that HSBC fundamentally failed to follow due process in conducting an investigation (for which 'review' seems an appropriate synonym to me by the way) then you'd need to assemble reasonable evidence of that if you want FOS to hold them to account for something beyond the communication issues.

Fergus10

eskbanker said:

Trouble is, once something has happened to trigger suspicion under anti money laundering legislation, they aren't allowed to explain this - this would be regarded as 'tipping off' and is an offence in itself.  Of course it's a simple human reaction to seek explanations and timescales, but HSBC (as with all the others) are prevented from disclosing either, so as far as that's concerned they were doing it by the book.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending them, and clearly some of the communication wasn't as it should have been, which is why they've offered the compensation, i.e. it's in response to what their staff may have said (or failed to say) to you, rather than any concession about the investigation process itself.  Obviously their staff should be trained to ensure that they relay a consistent and accurate message, even if they're prevented from telling the customer what they'd like to hear, but when customers contact multiple parts of the organisation in desperation, it's perhaps not a huge surprise that there are variations from the script.

So, if you feel that £150 isn't adequate recompense for their communication lapses, then there's nothing stopping you from pushing for more, but if you believe that HSBC fundamentally failed to follow due process in conducting an investigation (for which 'review' seems an appropriate synonym to me by the way) then you'd need to assemble reasonable evidence of that if you want FOS to hold them to account for something beyond the communication issues.

Thank you for your reply, I appreciate all the information & advice. I'll have a good think about how I want to pursue this further & then take action. Even if they simply 'review' how they treat customers in situations like this that would be something, although TBH I very much doubt that will happen, it really just seems to be that we're just a number to them. 

Kavski

Hi there
I think I am experiencing the same issue as you. I have Power of Attorney over my mother’s accounts which HSBC have accepted but with no warning or explanation they have put a hold on all her accounts. Not even 1 transaction has been made to trigger a fraud investigation. Literally no-Oe at HSBC can get a response from the Review team.

Any idea what I can do?

MovingForwards

Kavski said:

Hi there
I think I am experiencing the same issue as you. I have Power of Attorney over my mother’s accounts which HSBC have accepted but with no warning or explanation they have put a hold on all her accounts. Not even 1 transaction has been made to trigger a fraud investigation. Literally no-Oe at HSBC can get a response from the Review team.

Any idea what I can do?

People have commented on your thread.