It’s not often you can get excited about bank accounts, but right now is an exception here at The Money Mountain.
That’s because we’ve just coined in £50 of earnings this month – just from making a fuss with our bank account provider.
Here’s the whole, sorry story.
Back to the beginning
In August we completed the momentous task of finding a bank that would actually take our money and allow us to open up a 3-person joint account. We’d chased all over the high street looking for a bank that was competent enough to be able to handle this. Sadly there were few that were.
HSBC was the only one that seemed to be able to manage it and, to give them their credit, they didn’t let us down. The three of us turned up in branch, with the necessary form of ID and before we knew it The Money Mountain had a bank account!
Sadly, this level of efficiency hasn’t been replicated in all of our dealings with HSBC. In fact, Ben and I have been struggling with what should be a very simple task with the same bank for almost 10 years. Mere mortals might have given up, but not us. Not when cash is on the line.
The lads trip away – when banks just opened accounts for whatever you wanted
In 2008 we took a lads holiday with some friends and, being the elaborate planners that we are, we opened a bank account specifically for the occasion. Those were the heady days (pre-financial crash) where they didn’t seem to mind exactly what your account was about as long as you were putting your money on deposit with them. Fortunately for them we were just wanting a holiday with mates, not an account to trade nuclear weapons with.
Just a lads trip away, not to fund an arms program …
So, we marched into a branch in a prestigious London location and set up a business account for our little lads jaunt. The account worked well and allowed us to organise a cracking week-long trip where much merriment was had. And, whilst the lads were out wreaking havoc all over Europe (in the friendliest possible way), Ben and I carefully took care of the budget so we didn’t overspend.
In fact, we came home with £106 in surplus. Fiscal prudence that the chancellor of the time, Gordon Brown, could have done with. Seriously, Gordon.
The idea was that we’d recycle this surplus into a future trip, but commitments (read: ‘wives and kids’) seemed to get the better of most of the venturers and the sequel never happened. We kept the money in HSBC and, after a couple of years of inactivity, we were sent a letter saying that they had closed our dormant account and invited us to get the funds out.
Reclaiming dormant balances from HSBC – what seemed the most difficult thing in the world
Sadly, here began the real hard work. Whilst organising a week-long trip around Europe for 10 lads in their mid 20s felt a little like hard work, it was nothing in comparison to the absolute state that is HSBC’s effort at reuniting dormant bank balances with their owners.
No less than 6 trips were made over a period of 3 years into branches in an attempt to recover the funds. We also filled in the necessary forms three times, following the instructions of whichever branch worker was on duty and making up the rules that particular day.
Admittedly, this whole fiasco was made more difficult by the fact that Ben and I were joint account holders and rarely managed to show up in the branch at the same time, but still the advice that we were given felt a lot like we were trapped playing some ridiculous game where our money was the prize yet there was no way of winning.
We’d almost resigned ourselves to finding no possible way to get it.
But TMM resurrected the hope. And when we went into branch to open our new account, we thought it was worth one last shot.
In a rare show of competence, the bank rep there actually seemed to know what she was doing and sorted us out within a couple of weeks (usual administrative cock-ups still occurred but only proved inconvenient, rather than insurmountable this time round).
Did someone say compensation?
Getting our balance back was one thing, but of course we’re desperate for funds for our account here at TMM, so when the prospect of compensation was raised with us, our ears pricked right up.
Ben and I when the prospect of compensation was raised.
Of course, 10 years of banking incompetence sounded ripe for a bit of compensation and thankfully, after the point was made to HSBC, they conceded that we probably deserved £50 for all the troubles we’ve been through.
That’s probably a very poor return for all the hours we’ve spent trying to figure this out, but it feels like a small victory, and of course positions us nicely in our November earnings. I doubt that any other sources of income will be 10 years in the making as this one has, and it’s probably not repeatable (though if the incompetence of certain bank staff is anything to go by, then don’t rule it out in future). But on this occasion, we’re happy that the long game has paid off and we’re £50 the richer for it!
Onwards and upwards for the project then! Can we get the funds up to £100 by the end of November?
And, if you feel like telling us in the comments below – what’s the worst banking incompetence you’ve suffered from? Let’s make this a healing session….
No offence, HSBC
Oh yeah, so the point of this wasn’t to have a go at HSBC in general. It’s actually a decent bank who we’ve had lots of good times with (can you have ‘good times’ with a bank?!).
But they did get our account closing badly wrong, and to give them their credit eventually rectified it and gave us a sensible amount of compensation for it too. So after it all, we don’t feel that hard done by and certainly don’t have any problems using them for this project in future.