Clocking-off

With my credit card about to expire, those lovable folk at HSBC made sure that there was no delay in making sure that my replacement card was popped in the post, arriving more than a month before my current one expires.


As a security measure, these days you can't just open the envelope and start using your card at your whim. Instead, you have to "activate" it. This is done, according to the sticker on the front, by calling a phone number.

Now with almost any banking system these days, the phone is answered by a computer. The robotic voice tells you to press a variety of numeric combinations, some of which I've probably guessed, and within a few minutes, your card is ready to increase the profits of one of the biggest banking organisations in the world.

That would all be absolutely fine and normally, I wouldn't have thought twice, but what caught my attention was the small print under the phone number.

"Lines open between 8:00am and 10:00pm"

May I suggest to HSBC that they change their IT supplier if they have a series of computers that are unable to answer telephones overnight. No doubt they'll probably tell me that using "environmentally friendly computer systems" that clock-off daily is another one of their "initiatives aimed at improving customer service", just like withdrawing their monthly statement service.