Opening an HSBC Direct Savings Account - Update

Written by Nickel - 3 Comments

Just another quick update on the process of opening an HSBC Direct savings account… I checked the account from which the funds for our initial deposit are coming, and the money was actually pulled out on Friday. Thus, our account seems to be up and running, although we won’t actually be able to access it until we receive our account information in the mail.

Published on February 7th, 2006 - 3 Comments
Filed under: Banking
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About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!

Comments (scroll down to add your own):

Thanks to your advice, we’ve also opened an account with HSCB. Couldn’t be happier. They make the entire process very easy.

Did you get the $25 bonus yet?
Comment by John Koontz — Feb 7th 2006 @ 3:03 pm
John, good question, and the short answer is that I don’t know yet. I still can’t login to my account until I get the details in the mail. I’ll be sure to post when that happens, though, so keep an eye out.

Comment by nickel — Feb 7th 2006 @ 3:28 pm
I just opened an HSBC account as well, on your recommendation. But be aware of several consumer unfriendly things with this site:

1. They mail you an account number. You go to try to log on with the password you thought you created initially. They shut you out permanently after your third try. You have to call to get unstuck.

2. They don’t tell you, but a few days later the password will also arrive in the mail.

3. If you go to change your password, it will likely tell you that it’s unacceptable, but give you no reason why. You search help, to discover that it must be 6-8 characters, with numbers. Why not tell you that when you are rejected? Then you create one 8 characters including two numbers, and it too is rejected. But simply dumping the numbers suddenly makes it acceptable.

4. All the other direct accounts I have make you give your bank info once, when they take the initial deposit. HSBC makes you do it again after getting your account info. Bu, hey, they don’t take back their verification deposits!

5. You cannot make bank to bank transfers witout setting up a Security Key. But when you set one up, it says sorry we can’t do it unless you have one of our credit/ATM cards. Another call to Customer Service to get someone to bypass this.

6. I was on hold for 20 minutes for each of the three calls I’ve had to make so far.
Comment by Thomas Winslow — Feb 9th 2006 @ 11:05 pm