I haven't used internet banking before (despite working in IT for five years) as I've always been pretty pleased with the phone service from HSBC - especially (cue huge protests) since they moved the call centres to India - I've never had such courteous, competent service from ANY British company I've had to deal with.
That rant aside, I've been really pleasantly surprised by both the ease-of-use and the features on offer. It's far easier to see on-screen what direct debits are going out, and when, than it is to have someone read all that out to you - I even found two which were still set up (although not paying out) two years after they should have been closed. No problem - you can close them yourself online.
You get presented with a view of all your accounts (if you've got more than one) and from there you can go deeper into the details of each one: monthly statements, transactions pending, direct debits, standing orders, etc.
I was also pleased to see that you can choose to have your statements just online rather than receiving a paper version (which just ends up in the bin). You can also view all past statements from about six months before you joined the online service which is really useful.
You can also choose to make payments online - all you need is the account number and you can pay your bills, pay your mates the money you owe them, and so on - this is the really killer bit for me 'cos it stores all the previous transactions so they're there for when you want them in the future.
Basically, I've just been really impressed with the whole service - the only downside I can see is that I now have a new Internet Banking account number to remember on top of everything else, but that's hardly a massive problem!
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Hi and a warm welcome to ciao. A great first review. I hope you enjoy the ciao experience. Ray.
s_jones_2003 27.08.2004 10:36
Welcome to Ciao, I'm with HSBC too and have been using their internet banking facility for about 6 months now, find it really useful as never bother to read my paper statements! Sarah x
Bollinger28 27.08.2004 10:03
Hi and welcome to Ciao - great first review there. Regards Lexy
Advantages: Very easy to use internet banking. Good deals for students with £1000 free overdraft. Disadvantages: Since they have changed logon for internet banking it takes slightly longer
Aug 26th, 2004
very helpful by (7%):
helpful by (93%):
