HSBC think we are stupid

Dear Ben,

As an existing customer of the Milford on Sea branch that you intend to desert soon, I am in receipt of your letter dated ‘March 2011’.

At first I was not sure whether to laugh or cry, but I have now decided to be insulted instead.

I assume that as a senior manager in HSBC you are reasonably intelligent, therefore I have to assume that you consider your loyal customers in Milford on Sea to be stupid.

To explain, I do understand that you are unlikely to be the decision maker in the closure of our village branch, and that some grey suit, or even worse a collective of grey suits have loaded the gun for you to fire. (Is a collective of grey suits a ‘greed gaggle’, I am not sure?) Regardless, your name is the signatory on the letter, so I have to assume you have read it and may even have been involved in the content.

Firstly, your letter title: ‘Important changes to your branch.’ I think you will find there are no changes to our branch. There is going to be no branch. That is not a change, that is a closure. So why not just say, ‘Closure of your branch’ it makes things clearer for our limited intelligence, and factually correct. (Hope this is helping for when HSBC help to wreck another local community in the near future.)

Your first sentence is a gem, and I quote; ‘At HSBC, we are constantly evolving and developing our services to help you do your banking at a time and place that suits you.’ Unbelievable! Whoever wrote this letter must really consider me and my fellow local customers to be morons. The place that suits us is Milford on Sea, and you are closing it!  Furthermore if HSBC really wanted to 'help me do my banking' they would not close the branch.

You go on to say ‘after careful consideration, we have taken the difficult decision...’. Hmm, ‘careful consideration.’ I guess this means, ‘We have looked at our profits and decided to make some more, without consideration of our customers.' ‘Difficult decision’, I don’t really believe it was that difficult. HSBC just decided and did it. If I am faced with a difficult decision, I normally consult others to get the best result for all. I guess HSBC know that any form of local consultation would have caused issues, so why waste your time and go through the hassle.

Your second paragraph. Again I quote; ‘But don’t worry...’ I say ‘don’t patronise us!'  You go on to write, in a way that we should be grateful, that you are ‘automatically transferring’ our accounts to Lymington. Well bully for HSBC, I didn’t actually expect you to say that you were closing our accounts and inviting us to find new banks.

Your third paragraph goes on to list ‘the benefits’ I will get from the moving my account somewhere I did not ask. 1. Longer opening hours. (Ours were fine thanks) 2. Additional staff to assist with my banking needs. (We had plenty thanks) 2 and 3 I can’t even be bothered to comment on because they are so ridiculous.

You do not mention anything about our village cash machine in your letter, other than to tell us that machines exist in Lymington & New Milton. (We already knew that thanks.) I do not suppose HSBC care, but a lot of people fight daily to keep our village shops alive. We are also reliant on holiday makers to keep things going. By removing our cash machine, visitors and locals will not be able to get cash easily and sales will undoubtedly suffer. People will now have no choice other than to leave the village to get cash, and may shop near where they are visiting. This could be the final straw for some of our shops and they may close, and not out of choice like yourselves. If you remove our cash machine as well this would be more than shameful.

The irony is that HSBC could push hard working, but struggling businesses over the edge, at the same time that they have been helping the struggle by providing accessible bank loans. Oh no my mistake, you don't lend money to people that need it any more. 

In your final paragraph you provide an invitation to ask questions, Thank you so very much. It would have been handy if you had included an e-mail address, especially as your letter tells us how wonderful electronic banking is, but you didn’t. However, I have no intention of wasting the cost of postage stamp writing to you in snail mail, neither do I choose to call your 0845 telephone number at my expense. You also offer the opportunity to ‘call in’, ‘where any member of the team will be happy to help’. Help with what?! I suspect any conversation would go something like this: ‘Can you help me keep our branch open please?, Err, no. Thanks for helping, I will now make the four mile journey back to Milford, once I can get back to my car that has taken over an hour to find a parking space. My pleasure sir, have a nice day.

Your letter closes by ‘apologising for any inconvenience caused’. When I was at school I was taught that an apology is an expression of remorse or regret used when you had done something wrong. Do HSBC really think they have done something wrong and are feeling remorse? I suspect not.

HSBC may not care about our village, be we certainly do. I am confident that many villagers hope that HSBC’s decision to close our branch results in sufficient account defections to make your move a net loss. Even better would be that the ‘grey suit gang’ responsible receive a reduced bonus as a consequence. Better still we would love one of them to be on holiday in Milford on Sea when they run out of cash & their car breaks down. A resulting eight mile return walk to Lymington would be great to watch.

HSBC should be ashamed of their decision and of how the process has been handled. The banks were once an institution we all trusted and respected. They now have a well earned reputation for exactly the opposite.

PS: The footer on your letterhead has an icon encouraging us to ‘visit your branch’. Funny, oh so very funny. Do HSBC have a department who design mailings with an office & adjoining sound proofed room? Why a sound proofed room? Well, I guess they would need a place to go to raucously laugh their head off at our expense. ‘Hey John, look at this one. The morons out there will never spot the patronising garbage I have just put in this letter.’ He, he, he....'

PPS: I wonder what the consequence would be if every Milford on Sea resident decided to close all of their accounts with HSBC.  My guess is that some HSBC 'grey suits' would end up with very red faces.  I have no idea if this could happen in practise, but you might find enough people who wish to protest in this way.  Should this happen you may discover that decisions made on balance sheets don't always work out, - mainly because there are real people at the other end.

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Should anyone wish to sign a petition to try to keep the bank open, simply call into the Village Charity Shop.  You will also find a number of active campaigners set up in the village at various times.

If anyone has a view they would like to express, please feel free to post a comment below.