Fear and Loathing at HSBC

Interesting day on the Brunel campus. Robin went to the campus branch of HSBC (a huge bank here) to change her existing account to a fee-free account, as she'd been told she could do when she left here last September. But no, to do that, you have to provide proof of residence, which Robin has. Not just any proof will do. You must show proof of being a resident of a property that has been registered with some sort of official Estate Agent. Not only that, but to qualify for the no-fee banking account, you must deposit at least £500 in the account per month for the next year.

So Robin says "What does HSBC stand for?"

"Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation."

"Okay, never mind. I'll just keep the existing account and pay the darn fees." And of course, the monthly fees apply for the other nine months she's in the USA because closing the account would just mean going through the major pain of re-applying for another account next year.

I didn't get an HSBC photo. The photo here is in the computer services office where students go if they need help connecting to the Brunel WiFi network. It seems that Robin's password info got messed up during the student registration process earlier this morning and she couldn't get connected with her laptop or iPad. The guy pictured worked on it for almost an hour, then gave up and sent us to the other computer office where the real system administrators are who can make backend changes to the system. Sometimes it takes an hour or so for those changes to work, so we won't know until we're back on campus tomorrow if the connection is working. Or maybe they told us that to get us out of the office so they could go home.

Speaking of going home... Pub time.