I have a problem with a lot of banks.
Either it’s their advertising makes me ill, or it’s their service, thought process or rules.
That said, there is one bank that I save most of my anger for, and that is HSBC.
Originally, it was because their advertising made me angry, their service [or lack of] made me furious and their ethics made me laugh … however despite seemingly handing out my credit card information to every internet scammer in internetville, they have gone and done something recently, that has literally trumped all their previous misdeeds and made me stare in amazement.
A couple of days ago, I received an SMS from them that said this:
OK, so if we put aside the fact they invaded my life with an SMS … pushing a referral scheme is not that bad an idea.
When we had cynic, we did a similar thing and it worked a treat, however the reason it worked a treat was:
1. We were good.
2. Clients liked us.
3. We offered them a better incentive that a 10RMB Amazon voucher.
TEN FUCKING RENMINBI.
FOR AMAZON CHINA.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Apart from the fact 10RMB is £1.02, which means you could buy approximately nothing unless you referred about 8000 people to HSBC bank, the fact is Amazon China has less range than a Status Quo album.
Seriously, do they really think we’re that fucking cheap and nasty to sell a totally incompetent financial organization to our friends and family for a voucher we couldn’t possibly use.
Maybe if they upped it to $1000, I’d be sending them my entire Facebook friends list, but for 10RMB … I wouldn’t even bother sending them Kevin Robert’s information.
OK, so it could be argued this referral scheme has more ‘honour’ to the one we used at cynic, because our scheme offered overly generous benefits to clients who introduced us to other companies [depending on whether a referral resulted in a meeting or business, we would reduce their monthly retainer fee by a set amount for a set duration] … but that’s by-the-by, because the real news is there’s a bank that spends shitloads of money telling the World they’re experts in understanding their customers needs, then ‘demonstrates’ this understanding by sending unsolicited SMS to their customers in the belief they’ll happily volunteer the names & contact details of their friends and family for a 10RMB Amazon voucher that, in all interests, they’ll never be able to use.
Seriously, HSBC are incredibly out-of-touch, arrogant or utterly, utterly stupid.
The only reason I don’t change banks is because I’m literally intrigued to know what they’ll do next because at this rate, they’ll soon be rivaling NOKIA for the title of ‘mainstream brand who imploded in the shortest period of time’.