A cautionary bankster tale

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I set up a bank account at HSBC Penang in support of my possible future mm2h application.  To do this, I dealt with HSBC Bkk, who dealt with the “HSBC International Center” in KL, who were oppressively bureaucratic and unhelpful, and asked for lots of totally irrelevant information.  I felt like not bothering, but I persevered and eventually the account was opened.

I transferred 20,000 baht to get things started and waited for the ATM card to arrive, which it duly did by DHL from the KL office.

And now the trap.  With it was a statement that to activate the card I would have to attend in person at an HSBC branch [not an ATM!] in Malaysia!  Nobody, of course, neither Bkk or KL, had warned me of this.  Indeed, Bkk didn't know.

So now I have an account with money in it that I can't access, and would have to go to the trouble and expense of a visit to Malaysia, JUST TO ACTIVATE A CARD!

Of course, I am not going to do this, and the card can lapse if necessary.  I am trying to get HSBC Bkk to see if there is some other way, but I am not hopeful.

And now that trust has gone, I will not transfer the money for the Time Deposit now, but will wait for the very last moment, when all other matters are debugged.

This makes me worry about the mm2h application.  What insuperable hurdle will they spring at the last minute, which turns out to be fatal to the whole thing?

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Well your not exactly a million miles away from Malaysia and you seem pretty downbeat about the whole thing anyway

I can not understand whey you have not visited yourself especially after the sort of questions you have asked.  You could have then opened the account in person and solved all the BKK  hassles looked around and then decided if you wanted to apply

 

Cheers

JJ

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Sorry I don't get this. What do you want to do with a Malaysian HSBC ATM pass in BKK?
Getting Baht out of the BKK machine from your Malaysian account against an extra fee?

Anyway after 9/11 it became more difficult to open foreign bank accounts for all the obvious reasons.
IMHO HSBC-premier service which let you open a foreign bank from the country you are residing seems great service to me.
When we wanted to open an account from the Netherlands our only option was to come over to Malaysia and do it here.

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hi,

I have another take on this, and probably one that we have all experienced. It's the fact that when you do anything with a bank and you ask all the obvious questions, then you say "is there anything else that I should be aware of " and they say, "no we've covered everything"  so what happens.

Out of the blue some rule or regulation that no-one mentioned, and you'd need to be an expert divination artist to have worked out for yourself.

It's happened to me time and time again, and last year with HSBC in the UK, mamma mia.

I also had to deal with HSBC International. They work in mindless pigeon holes :

"I'll pass your email on, if you don't hear from anyone in ...,"
"I can't put you through as this is the call centre in Mumbay but if you call back ..."
"It's not my department but if you phone Swansea , oh you're overseas, then you need the call centre in Mumbay,"
"It's hard to say on the phone, can you please visit your local branch,"
"Oh, you're in Portugal well then can you visit Lisbon,"
"Oh, there's no HSBC in Lisbon or Portugal, right, leave this with me."
"Do you know if there's an HSBC in Spain." (HSBC staff don't know much about HSBC)

and, finally :

"Is Gibraltar close to you?" (just before giving up, my reply was, "yes, luckily, it's the next bus stop")

This is a compilation from about 5 different HSBC staffers.

All well meaning, all good if you've got 50 years to spare, and all totally a waste of space. And HSBC really doesn't like emails, so be prepared for long-distance phone bills.

Phew, I feel better.

Freebee, I have to agree with JJ. Why not take a holiday and have a few days in Penang, see the place, relax, activate the card (or change banks), and you'd probably be able to meet up with some nice folks from the forum.

Alternatively ask HSBC to tell you the validity of the card. Then let it expire, and apply for a new card at HSBC in Penang when you finally arrive.

For the mm2h application there are no insuperable hurdles. Many of us have applied by ourselves and it all went very well.

The difference is that mm2h folks at MoTour want you as a my2homer. HSBC folks don't give a rat's doodah if you're a customer or not.



PS : More actual HSBC efficiency. HSBC's premier service is generally rated better than the ordinary peasant accounts. It can hardly be worse.

I have a peasant's account with HSBC with an offshore address, meaning no tax payable. Last year I notified HSBC of a temporary change of mailing address and specifically stated that this was not a change of account address.

Result, they changed the account address and rescinded the tax-free status. When I found out it was some months later. I complained, they initiated a new no-tax status and I had to complete new forms.

HSBC refused to return the tax already grabbed by HSBC. No apologies from HSBC, no, "oops we made an error," nothing but deniable liability. 

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Definitely jump on a plane to Penang - there's so many cheap flights, seems crazy not to.

On the bank account opening thing, I seem to remember reading on here(?) that it is easier if you've got the conditional MM2H approval, or have I got that wrong?  That's what we were intending to do (if we're successful in getting the approval).

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After we recieved the conditional approval letter we went to the HSBC branch on Downing street, here in Penang, opening the account was indeed hassle free.   

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hi,

Just to clarify. When you receive the "Letter of Conditional Approval" then if you show this to the bank there will be absolutely no problems with opening an account.

You can open an account without this letter but the bank may ask for proof of what you are doing in Malaysia, business details, addresses, that sort of thing. Having written this I should say that I opened a Maybank savings account several years ago with just my passport, RM500, and an honest, as the day is long, face.

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Interesting views folks, particularly Scott with personal experiences.  I am currently waiting for HSBC Bkk's response, and I will post progress IDC.  Incidentally, my score for setting up remote bank accounts with HSBC prior to this is 1 success and 1 failure, for various reasons.

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Slightly off tangent, but you can open a bank account in NZ with instant internet access with ZERO deposit (for 30 days), and all you need is your passport & 25 to 30 minutes of your time.

There are still a few sane places in the world!

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Re the NZ, do you mean applying from outside NZ, presumably at an NZ bank in foreign country, to whom you show the passport?

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It's the fact that when you do anything with a bank and you ask all the obvious questions, then you say "is there anything else that I should be aware of " and they say, "no we've covered everything"  so what happens.

Out of the blue some rule or regulation that no-one mentioned, and you'd need to be an expert divination artist to have worked out for yourself.
 

Yes!  This is it precisely.  Unfortunately, I never even got to that degree of question-asking, trusting to the logic that that "well, they will tell me everything, won't they?".   No, they won't.

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In my experience, banking laws just keep changing.  We have bank accounts in Singapore - opened the first one several years ago from the UK (when we were still living in the UK).

Now living in Thailand, everything operating fine at Singapore banks until we tried to open a different currency account in Singapore (with the same bank we've been with for ages) and they needed to see us in person with passports in hand.

I guess this is just tightening up of bank rules and there is also some different interpretations of rules between different banks (certainly in Singapore).

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Slightly off tangent, but you can open a bank account in NZ with instant internet access with ZERO deposit (for 30 days), and all you need is your passport & 25 to 30 minutes of your time.

May I be nosey and ask if that is an interest bearing account and, if so, do they tax it?  Sounds very interesting (pardon the pun).

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The HSBC Bkk lady says that if I tried to open an account in China, they have a similar trick.  They send the cards to your home address, but you have to collect the PIN from a branch in China.  This forces you to attend, which might be from half-way round the globe.  It is obviously a general problem.  It is obviously very restrictive, and puts an obstacle in the way of movement of funds, and perhaps people.  If it were universal, nobody would open foreign accounts by choice, but by necessity.

How much of this is due to the HSBC itself and how much due to the regulations of the national banks, I do not know.

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hi,

My own frustrating and exasperating experience of HSBC, across a range of items and on different continents, makes me think that HSBC has a flawed system. It says "the world's local bank" and this is quite true. As a local bank at the end of the street in your town it's probably OK, but try the HSBC in the next town or another country, and you've got problems.

Still HSBC didn't go bankrupt in late 2008. My other bank was Kaupthing, the "Icelandic Iceberg" 95% under water.

I realise that other members will have different, and I hope, much better experiences of HSBC.

Personally I've found that here in Malaysia CIMB is pretty efficient and helpful. And you can still get passbooks savings accounts which is very handy.

Maybank stopped passbook accounts a few of years ago in an effort to upgrade. With Maybank you get a withdrawal slip or account print-out. These quickly fade even when kept in the dark which is where the customer is left as your data is continuously disappearing.