HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
1–10 of 287 posts
Re: HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
#2When people tell me they don't "get" Bitcoin, this is exactly the sort of thing I have been looking for to try to explain it. Yes, it has problems and is still maturing, but no one can inexplicably just off your bank account like this.
Re: HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
#3So, immediately get on the horn with your lawyer and have your lawyer on his letterhead send them a letter and if the response is not to your liking sue the bastards.
In the meantime set up another account with another bank and make sure all invoices that are pending but not yet paid are paid into that account and not into the HSBC account.
Then shift over all the monthly payments to the new account as funds appear.
Re: HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
#4I would say (a) open a bank account with someone else and (b) contact someone from the BBC (eg https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qjnv/contact) and make a noise.
Re: HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
#5When people tell me they don't "get" Bitcoin, this is exactly the sort of thing I have been looking for to try to explain it. Yes, it has problems and is still maturing, but no one can inexplicably just off your bank account like this.
Bitcoin can still be akin to keeping your life savings in the sock drawer. You still have to take steps to keep your holdings safe from a single point of failure and if you do get breached there's no legal recourse. You have nearly full control of your funds via bitcoin, but with that much control comes great responsibility to minimize risk that you normally expect a financial institution to do.
Re: HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
#6Reminds me of "Operation Chokepoint" where the U.S. federal government was able to persuade (not force) banks to cut off firearms dealers from their accounts in an effort to affect "unsavory businesses".
Another reason why I want to avoid a cashless society, at least in the way we're heading right now. Scary how quickly banks will cave in to pressure from the feds before any legal process even begins (if ever).
http://www.newsmax.com/US/Operation-Choke-Point-federal-bank...
Re: HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
#7> Don’t bank with HSBC.
After having similarly-frustrating things happen with my HSBC personal accounts over the years, I fully support this suggestion. They are awful. They take extreme steps (suspending accounts, rejecting payments, etc.) without contacting the customer; when you reach out to them, it's hours of being passed around before you reach the right person. If you reach a person at all.
Re: HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
#8I am from India. A startup I was part of also had a bad experience with the bank. I can't go into the details but the bottom line is that the bank branch where we had our account was absolutely uncooperative. The problem was resolved after many days of mail writing, talking to phone banking and running after the branch people.
Re: HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
#9> Then Apple failed. This was a strange one — it appears you actually need a valid payment card associated with your Apple account or you cannot download free apps or update existing ones. Every time you try it just asks you to re-enter payment details. Not a show-stopper, but frustrating all the same.
Not true. They have a lot of dark patterns to make you think that but you don't actually need a payment account associated with your Apple ID. It's possible they've changed this since the last time I tried doing setting one up but you may need to go through the desktop interface rather than doing it directly on a iOS device.
Re: HSBC is killing my business, piece by piece
#10When people tell me they don't "get" Bitcoin, this is exactly the sort of thing I have been looking for to try to explain it. Yes, it has problems and is still maturing, but no one can inexplicably just off your bank account like this.
https://news.bitcoin.com/top-10-biggest-bitcoin-villains-dat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox
"Mt. Gox announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and the company were missing and likely stolen, an amount valued at more than $450 million at the time"