Free £5 for going green for HSBC customers

MSE_Jenny

What is this all about?

HSBC customers can get £5 credited to their account by agreeing to ‘go green’ before 30 June 08. This means you’ll need to stop getting paper statements, letters, marketing, cheque and paying in books to cut down on the amount of paper generated for your account.

How to sign up

Each account holder needs to be registered for internet banking and provide an email and home or mobile telephone number to sign up. Just log into your internet banking account and select ‘green’ from the ‘apply for products’ menu of the left of the screen.

All messages, including statements and information on any bank charges for the account will then delivered to your online internet banking.

Some moneysavers have reported being able to donate the £5 to a green charity, yet if you don’t select this option when signing up the cash will automatically be paid into your account within 21 days of ‘going green’.

Is this account any good?

Not really, most HSBC accounts pay you a paltry 0.1% in-credit interest and charge 18.8% AER on overdrafts.

You can do massively better, right now there are two accounts paying more than 8% interest if you’re in credit, one account that’ll give you £100 for signing up and two 0% overdraft accounts!

Full details in the Best Bank Accounts guide.

What else do I need to know?

If you’re not ready to ‘go green’ all the way, you can ask for online delivery of your statements and still receive letters, marketing, cheque books and paying in books by post. You won’t get the free £5 if you do this though.

If 'going green' doesn’t work out for you, you can change you mind and switch back later.

[threadbanner]box[/threadbanner]

sysboy

Great. I want to go green with HSBC.

pmorrisjones

Does this apply to First Direct too? Thanks.

lilmissmup

Tells me they want to donate the £5 to green charities.

nikzGfx

Doh am already on paper free billing lol!

purplenails

gone green but don't think I'm getting cashback as think that's only for new customers, oh well seems they're donating it to environmental charities.

Cleosmum

Its for new and current customers

benbenandme

This is quite confusing ... on hsbc homepage it says they'll give you €5 for switching to green, but as an existing customer you have yo log on to internet banking and click on the left-hand side, which then tells you they donate €5 to charity. Has anyone switched and received the cash?

Mozart321

Why would anyone do this? I't so cynical, we charge them so much money every year but we'll give them £5 and they will save us even more money by not having to print and send chequebooks and statements!

Discodee

I'd ditch the statements but I need mycheque book. I pay my council tax by cheque (Not trusting them with direct debits. its the ONLY bill not paid by direct debits!) and sometimes you see an offer in a mag, or what have you and you can just send off a cheque. eg I ordered some lovely map of the world cards for the kids under an offer in the post (99p lol) It costs more for a postal order PLUS you have to go and queue and get it, and I wouldn't put my bank details on a form in the post, never know who'll find it.

littlemissmoney

MSE_Jenny wrote: »

Some moneysavers have reported being able to donate the £5 to a green charity, yet if you don’t select this option when signing up the cash will automatically be paid into your account within 21 days of ‘going green’.

I wasn't given the option not to donate the money to charity. Have I messed up? (I'm an existing customer).