Hi
I share everyones concern, and frustration bordering on anger at this latest failure, and the continuing appalling lack of customer service from HSBC.
I would urge everyone to send an email to epayments so that you have something on record. I am copying one of my emails below, and hope you might find it helpful.
I took a similar course of action in January, and when I submitted my compensation claim I based it on sales lost for the period (calculated with reference to average HSBC account turnover), net of vat. I added to this a charge of £30 per hour for my time expended in sorting out the total mess created by the failure, and a charge of £10 per hour for additional staffing costs in dealing with increased volumes of telephone calls etc.
The claim was agreed in two days, and paid into my account 14 days later.
I am sure that having documented my views in emails during the time of the system failure helped in expediting this, together with the fact that my claim was an accurate reflection of my losses, that were easily reconcileable by them. I realise that I probably lost first time customers that would never return, but such losses are of course not quantifiable. Whilst I am sure it is in all our instincts to try to claim something extra in respect of this, I would rather claim for my actual losses and receive the money quickly than enter into a long drawn out dispute regarding it.
Anyway, my email is copied below, and I hope that people may find my contribution useful.
Merchant Number xxxxxxxxx
I refer to my email of shortly before 8am this morning, in which I complained regarding the complete lack of communication from HSBC in regard to the ongoing gateway failure, with particular reference to the identical lack of communication in the failure early this year.
The gateway has now been down for over 25 hours.
Not a single communication has been received from HSBC regarding this.
I stated in my earlier email that I expected to receive a reply by noon. Disappointingly, but unsurprisingly, this has not happened.
The latest of many telephone calls by myself to your call centre has provided me with the latest update as follows:-
1. You are working on it.
2. You do not have any timeframe for when the gateway will be available again.
3. When it is back up, you will put a notice on the e-payments website.
An acknowledgement of the serious impact it is having on your customers would not go amiss. There are, apparently, no plans to inform your customers proactively as to what is going on.
I will now have to check your website constantly to discover when you have rectified the problem. This is in addition to expending time on updating my own website constantly, as, unlike yourselves, I believe that we should keep our customers fully informed of problems.
Please note that I will be expecting HSBC not only to compensate me for the large amount of orders that I am losing, but also for the significant amount of time that I have expended already on this matter, and, no doubt, will have to continue to expend until such time as you have rectified the problem and dealt with any data problems arising from it.
Many further issues arise from this failure, in particular the stability of the platform you are using, the inadequacy of back-up systems and the apparent total ineffectiveness of the contingency procedures arising from the so-called "Major Incident Review" of earlier this year.
I would normally expect a prompt acknowlegement to an email containing such significant and valid complaints as detailed above. With the track record of e-payments department I will not be holding my breath.
The lack of concern for the needs of your customers continues to astound me.
