HSBC is absolute sh_t!! The worst bank around. All their marketing of think global act local is nonsense. Customer sesrvice has to be the worst i have ever experienced. Very beaucratic organization and i recomend all to stay away. problem is that they kind of have a dominant position in the UK and bully everyone into using them and paying them for the 'privelage'. I have decided to move to Lloyds.

1. Customer Service is very inflexible and not the friendliest. Even with a next-to-excellent score and despite having held their HSBC Platinum credit card for 8 years with payments always made in full and on-time, they would not consider a decrease in my APR. They don't seem to do promotions (0% balance transfers, low rates on purchases etc) unlike other banks. I went overlimit once by GBP12 because payment had taken a few hours longer to hit my account than I expected. I eventually spent 30 mins on the phone trying to obtain an authorisation for the transaction at a restaurant, got quizzed as to my payment history as if I were a lousy payer, and eventually got the transaction rejected anyway. To add insult to injury, they searched my credit file that day and left a erroneous mark saying that I'd applied for a credit card (this impacted my score adversely). I wrote to complain and never received even a word of apology. TERRIBLE service.

The fee although I always pay for mine with Points - 1350 a year which isn't hard to wrack up.... ouch - that's £13500 a year, but then if your a business traveller that's not hard !! Wouldn't have it if I didn't make enough points per annum but having said that travel insurance for me and the family is more than £80 for a multi trip and the policies aren't as good elsewhere...