Our business bank account is interesting. There’s usually sufficient balance to keep the bank manager in bonuses and the cheques roll in from well known household names. We’ve never been overdrawn on our business account. Yet nearly every month my HSBC business card gets stopped. Usually at an awkward time like paying for a client’s lunch. So why do they do it? The rules of course….
The company credit cards have an aggregate and an individual maximum and eventually you may hit one of them. Particularly if business is doing well. But you’re not allowed to pay any money off mid month to keep the card useful. Against the rules. So it’s useless til month end.
More business = more spend = more for the bank you’d think.
So why do they cut you off from doing more business? Because the “product” can’t cope with any flexing. Ah well….. But after regular and irritating calls to the call centres it was time to do something.
Irritating because they wont talk to our finance person. Irritating because you get ID&V-ed again after transfer. Irritating because security questions like what was the last transaction on the account mean nothing to the average MD of a SME company. Irritating because they also cut you off frequently for security checks…… all basic stuff really, but no one is thinking about customer effort they create from these policies and product rules.
So I called the sales call centre to find there was no real alternative. I tried it again for somebody who was bovvered.. Same answer. I tried the man on the end of the newsletter. Lo, there was an answer – a commercial card that you can pay down mid month. So we ordered that. You can guess what happened next…..
Yes, they cut the existing card off. Why because the new one had been sent out. Where? To my PA. I’ll see the new one some day when the post is working again…… dumb things, dumb things, dumb things……
What’s the collective name for a bunch of dumb things….. answers on a postcard please (but not til after the postal strike)
