More HSBC incompetence
I recently tried to submit a secure message through the "My messages" part of HSBC's Internet banking system.
Whenever I tried to submit my message, I received the following error:
"Sorry. There is currently a system fault. Please try again later.(889)"
After trying several times during the day, I completed an Internet Banking Technical Support form and included the requested details (Operating System, Browser, connection type, details of the problem, etc.).
First I received a generic e-mail response from "Nalinaxi Pujari" asking me to contact the Internet Banking Helpdesk. I replied, explaining that I had completed a form regarding a technical fault on the Internet banking site and had expected it to be passed to the technical department, not receive a generic response to call the helpdesk.
"Saurabh Gupta" then replied, saying:
"Our dedicated customer resolutions team is looking into the matter you have raised and will contact you with full response as soon as they have completed their investigations."
"Jackie Fox" then sent me an email, saying:
"Thank you for your message dated 21-Dec-2007 regarding problems when sending a message to us.
The error message 'Sorry. There is currently a system fault. Please try again later.(889)' is normally shown when the text of a message is copied from Word and then pasted into the message service. It is usually caused by unusual characters within the text."
I replied, explaining that I didn't use Word and had typed my message into the form directly; I included a copy of my original message text in the e-mail to be helpful.
Finally "Kumar Nadar" replied with the following classic:
"Thank you for your e-mail.
I apologise for the inconvenience caused.
Please be advised that symbols such as the Pound sign, '<' and '>' cannot be used in the secure e-messaging system as they can be interpreted by computer as 'Java code' that would present us with a security issue.
In future, you could perhaps substitute the Pound sign with 'GBP' in your e-messages."
I'm currently pondering how to respond to this message. Aside from the technical stupidity (seemingly the characters '£', '<' and '>' can never be used in 'Java code' because of the security risk), there is also the abismal usability issue of a message a customer submits failing with the response "Sorry. There is currently a system fault. Please try again later.(889)" becuase they have used a currency character in their message.
At least it only took several weeks for them to answer my original question; interestingly, in their response through the Internet Banking messaging system, they didn't use "GBP" - I'm guessing they tried to use the '£' character, but it appears as an 'Â' character ;)
How worrying is it when your bank cannot correctly handle certain characters on their Internet Banking system - you know, like such uncommon characters in U.K. banking as '£'?
Tagged HSBC.