Drama Is Spelled With an H-S-B-C

Usually, the drama in my life centers around everything but my financial life. Usually, my money is my safe place--ordered in neat little packages of goals and funds and expenses vs. saving. Not so this week.

I recently completed my $5K goal, albeit with some (still on-going) drama. HSBC transferred the money from my US checking account TWICE on October 30, causing my heart to give out when I spied a ZERO and a -$4.11 overdraft in ugly red letters in my checking and savings accounts, respectively, two nights ago.

Luckily! I hadn't gotten around to transferring the $25 from my savings account to my checking account this month (I get free checking if I do this transfer, but the savings account interest is so minuscule that I always transfer it back into checking). So, the $4.11 overage was safely pulled from my linked savings (something that my NZ bank is apparently incapable of doing). HOWEVER, they charged me $10 for the privilege.

I thought that I had accidentally hit the 'transfer' button twice after I saw this. I am usually terribly careful not to do that, but hey, I'm human. So when I saw Single Ma's post about the same thing happening to her on the same day that my money was transferred, the light bulb went off--it was bank error, and definitely NOT in my favor!!

But that email that she received, politely informing her of the error and how they were going to fix it? I never got one. I only have $5K at HSBC, and she has $46K. Apparently somewhere in there is the line between getting an email notification and immediate action, and not saying a word and letting your customers think they are big dumb arses for incorrectly executing a transfer. Grrr. This makes me angry.

I sent an email to them already, but will follow it up with them as soon as I get a second off from work. They are going to get an earful.