HSBC Shock Horror

I've often noticed that when applying for credit cards. I just put my home address when it asks for employer's address, and I've never had it questioned.

Chris

In other words, it seems that HSBC offer very little and what they do offer costs them little or nothing. In my case I've had one occasion when 'Premier' perks worked to my advantage. I had to stop a cheque that had gone missing. On calling their customer support line I was told that stopping cheques against 'Premier' accounts was free.

Maybe HSBC should consider applying these marginal benefits to all their customers and scrapping the 'Premier' concept altogether?

Just a bit of C+P, but I think you'd have trouble arguing these were marginal benefits:

Worldwide family travel insurance

Independent Financial Advice

Inheritance Tax Planning

Relationship Manager

Global Concierge Services

Premier Bank Account * £500 interest free overdraft with an automatic £5,000 limit, typical EAR 9.9% variable. * No fees for overdrawing your account or exceeding an agreed limit. * Withdrawals of up to £2,000 can be made against cheques paid in, before they have cleared (available at HSBC Bank only). * Access to cash worldwide using Cirrus/Maestro cash machines free of any fees from HSBC when using your Premier International Debit Card*.

Preferential fixed rate mortgages (and variable rate mortgages over £250,000)

Savings - HSBC Premier Savings and Preferential Cash Mini ISA, each giving 0.4% extra as a starting point.

HSBC Premier Credit Card - 9.9% TAPR and 2 years extended manufacturers' warranty

International personal banking - if you require accounts overseas

Identity theft assistance and Personal security advice at home and abroad

Global Emergency Services - help in a medical, financial or legal emergency worldwide. * Emergency cash at 170,000 locations. * Emergency medical referral and where necessary to an English speaking doctor. * Emergency legal referral to lawyers and other legal service providers. * Expert help with lost travel documents, luggage or cards. * Emergency messaging, medical evacuation and repatriation.

I hadn't noticed they offer that in the UK, and it looks useful. Unfortunately its not one of the benefits included with my offshore Premier account.

Have you actually used this service? I tried once, and they'll book flights, hotels, car hire etc for you, but the prices are never as good as you can get from many travel agents or by booking online.

They call it free, but it only applies if you use an HSBC ATM machine, and even then they add a 2.75% loading into the foreign currency exchange rate. Compare that with Nationwide, who have no fees and almost no exchange rate loading. I did an actual comparison once by withdrawing exactly the same amount of cash on the same day from my HSBC Premier account and from my Nationwide FlexAccount. HSBC debited my account with £48.40 while Nationwide debited it with £47.28. And with Nationwide you can make the withdrawals at any bank whose ATMs are on the Visa network.

0.4% extra over what? An HSBC Premier Savings account currently pays 3.75% AER interest on deposits over £100,000. Even less on amounts below that. You can get considerably better rates than that elsewhere with no minimum deposit.

Chris

The set of benefits on an offshore Premier Account will be different, HSBC Offshore set all their own products...

For the UK Premier debit card withdrawls are now for all Cirrus and Maestro machines, not just HSBC group ones.

Savings - eg Cash ISA 4.5% rather than 4.1%, so its not the very best but theres no clearing time to get the money back into my current account and they dont convert your savings off into some stuipidly low paying account while your not looking. having said all that if you want to match ING you can, Online saver pays 4.75%.

Ian

Online Saver - is that the one where you get no interest for any month in which you make a withdrawal? Not quite the same as the ING account...

X-No-Archive: yes In message , JF writes of HBSC's 'Premier' service:

The situation was resolved today at a meeting between myself and the local HSBC's branch chief accountant.

When HSBC launched their 'Premier' service, several criteria had to be met by the bank's customers for them to be invited to convert their accounts to 'Premier'. These were a certain level of income, a suitably grotesque mortgage with HSBC, investments held and so on. It didn't matter if the customer's circumstances subsequently changed (I moved a SIPP from HSBC Investment). Once you were a 'Premier' customer, that was it. You wuz locked into the system.

Recently HSBC changed those rules. If a customer did something to upset them, such as moving large sums away from HSBC etc, then a monthly charge would be imposed if he or she wished to remain 'Premier' account customers.

I didn't. Downgrading my accounts took him a few mouse clicks and it was done. No changing of account names, numbers or passwords. The GBP19.95 scheduled to be extracted from my account later this month will be credited back on the same day.

X-No-Archive: yes In message , JF writes

All now cleared up. As Peter King suspected, the problem was due to a change in circumstances. When HSBC Republic decided that they no longer wished to handle my SIPP portfolio unless I paid them GBP5000 per annum, I moved the fund to another stockbroker. Other black marks were earned when I transferred savings to ING Direct.

A few mouse clicks in the chief clerk's office at my local branch was all it took to change all my accounts from their silly 'Premier' service accounts to normal accounts. The GBP19.95 was credited back to me.

X-No-Archive: yes

??? I thought you'd cleared this up a couple of weeks back?

X-No-Archive: yes In message , Simon Jerram writes

Not fully cleared until the GBP19.95 debit due to be snaffled by HSBC on

28th Oct 2005 was credited back -- on the same day, too!