Our three registered letters to HSBC Bank Malta plc CEO Andrew Beane and three e-mails to his executive assistant had remained unanswered for over four months, but finally elicited a partial indirect response by registered mail, which we received last Friday.
This only came about following the additional pressure which we were constrained to apply, by exposing HSBC’s unjustifiable tardiness in practically all the Sunday newspapers of June 24, and we take this opportunity to thank the media concerned for its cooperation in this regard.
Given these circumstances, this same CEO’s interview, coincidentally published in The Sunday Times of Malta on June 24, struck a discordant note, particularly Mr Beane’s statement that: “The financial services industry, if you pare it back to its foundations, is built on trust, between customers and the bank…” which did not impress us at all, considering his incredible sluggishness that belied this very “dogma of reciprocal trust” he publicly subscribes to.
HSBC never misses an opportunity to try, in its own words, to portray itself as a provider of an “exceptional customer experience”. Deeds do, however, speak much louder than words and from our point of view, HSBC has failed this reality check miserably, by betraying our trust.
How can a long-standing HSBC customer, having an impeccable bank account operation track record stretching over 35 years, possibly continue to trust HSBC, which elected to ignore our communications and unreasonably had been tacitly refusing to release our security for more than four months, notwithstanding the undeniable fact that we no longer enjoyed (or required) any facilities from HSBC?
We do, nonetheless, accept HSBC’s Charles Galea’s very belated, just received apology, presumably made on behalf of his CEO, who understandably must have been too busy to respond directly during all this time. We do remind him, however, that the other issues and complaints we had raised in our initial registered letter, addressed to him personally last February, have to date remained unaddressed and we are obviously still entitled and expect the required adequate response from HSBC.
It goes without saying that readers will draw their own conclusions fromall this.