In 1995 the office I worked in had one Internet connection, and it was on my computer! I held the key to the World Wide Web and I used it to render my managers into pointing cave dwellers as early websites took an hour to load before their ever-widening eyes.
Dial up’s reassuring buzzes and clicks gave way to the mystery and expense of ISDN, which gave way to the White Elephant of WAP. T1 was for show offs, The Mobile Internet transformed the pub quiz, and now even my mum complains about her Broadband upload speed.
Every evolution giving me more freedom, more control and more access, and better than anything else, with every step towards Internet maturity, we move further away from ‘The Interwebs’ being an acceptable term for adult conversation.
I‘ve got 36 pages open in Chrome as I type this, I’m selling, buying, saving, typing, sharing, talking and stalking all at once… I’m in charge of my finances, independent, in control and in touch with my family and friends around the world,
I’m not quite living the dream Tim Berners Lee had when he spoke about the renaissance of creativity the Internet could cause, but I am hoping to get the bid I want on eBay.
From the over played role of Social Media in Iran and Egypt to the under valued role of Facebook keeping loved ones in touch across the world… The Internet man… how did I ever live without it?
Until now… when HSBC went and ruined it.
After weeks of simply closing the tiresome pop up warning box, suddenly I could no longer access my very handy HSBC dashboard of accounts, where I pay my rent, council tax, bills and all the dull stuff I used to ignore and get into trouble for.
The friendly and secure, easy to use interface, where I pay friends who’ve bought tickets, organise holidays, chip in for presents and all the stuff I used to forget all the time. (Sorry again friends!)
The sacred safe place where I save for my wedding, my future and avoid being overdrawn (much) and overcharged (a lot).
Internet banking saved me from weekly, daily and monthly Financial Mismanagement and an inbred fear of envelopes with windows and rescued me from years of fines, charges, and the very thought of my finances incurring an eye swivelling a self induced temporary lobotomy.
But now, like the banking strand of Hn51, HSBC’s contribution to the evolution of the Internet and the gift of independence it gave my life is…
The HSBC Key of Grief and Shame.
The HSBC Key of Grief and Shame promises to improve my security, but it’s less convincing than a Ben10 spy toy that came free with a Happy Meal
The HSBC Key of Grief and Shame creepily sidles up to me, telling me that it’s improving my life, whist it stabs me in the back, robbing precious time, and returning the internet to a chore that I have to remember to take with me.
The HSBC Key of Grief and Shame sucks up pretending to be my friend, but really it keeps secrets and won’t let me log on with just my carefully remembered codes, without the Key of Grief and Shame’s oh so important fished out of it’s ear pass words it makes up every time and whispers sneakily, and too quickly, every time I want to see my balance, I can’t do a thing.
The HSBC key of Grief and Shame looks weaker than a Water Biscuit that’s been through cold turkey, so much so I can’t trust the ‘key ring fob’ hang tag that gestures at me, this Christmas Cracker toy would never last a day in my laptop case.
Which means the HSBC Key of Grief and Shame is always at home when I need it at work, or always at work, when I really, really need it at home… Like. Right. Now!
The HSBC Key of Grief and Shame holds it’s petty little codes on it’s smug little screen for just the right amount of time, which for me is mainly just the wrong time to allow for getting distracted by more interesting matters to have to begin again with it’s selfish little buttons that I’d rather hammer into molecules than ‘hold down firmly’, it’s the least I can do not to throttle the tiny bastard every time I just want to pay the gas bill.
The HSBC Key of Grief and Shame is my sworn enemy, but I am at its mercy.
I tried a peaceful protest by ignoring it, but the rent was due, I needed to know if the Standing Orders had gone through and I wanted to make a transfer to my mum.
I tried to make a dirty protest, but in HSBC Brixton’s High St branch, no one flinches at that kind of behaviour.
Like an inhabitant of an occupied territory I have had to accept the totalitarian regime that now presides over me, I know it’s an extreme analogy, I know it probably makes no sense, I know I’d be the first to complain if someone did rob my account, I know I could have gone to work and got it in the time it’s taken me to write this, or even just rung the call centre…
But if there’s anyone out there who feels similarly robbed of their freedom, and wants’ to join the resistance, then meet me tonight, after dark, just don’t bring any codes…
Update…
We are not alone, links received, in support, the resistance is growing!
Below are a few links to articles and groups of dissatisfied customers:
http://www.moneytoolkit.com/2011/08/hsbc-secure-key-fail/
http://thefinanser.co.uk/fsclub/2011/08/hsbc-stumble-with-secure-key.html
http://money-watch.co.uk/8224/hsbc-secure-key
http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/hsbc
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scrap-the-HSBC-Secure-Key/220553231298352
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=329622
My sentiments exactly. I raged and raged against this tiny calculator-cum-time-thief in one of my posts, albeit less amusingly, a few weeks before it arrived. I even threatened to leave. Alas, I can`t actually be bothered to transfer all my payments over, etc.
I thought it was secure enough already, tbh:http://bit.ly/jBcM9v
You don’t normally have to transfer payments over, banks are more than willing to do that for you if you’ll use their little security machine instead. Because I’m afraid its not only HSBC that have these things, they all do. The best I’ve managed is to get 2 from Smile Bank, then I can leave one at work and one at home!
This is simply not true. Many high street banks DON’T use the fobs.
Lloyds TSB require you to answer a special automated call to your phone to confirm payments but nothing to log in. And no special fob to lose.
So far, anyway.
I had mine attached to my keys, that funnily enough, reside in my pocket most of the time. No surprise, the stupid screen cracked after a week and I had to get a new one.
I’m a hater too. I loved internet banking — check your balance in the middle of the night, at work (or the middle of the night at work, if you’re a designer like me) — but since I’ve been forced onto the damn keychain I barely check it. What terrifies me is if I’m somewhere and desperately need to move money from my savings to cheque to pay an unexpected bill (as happened last week when what was meant to be a comped hotel room wasn’t and I had to pay £200) and I don’t have the damn fob on me. (For the record, I shifted money using another bank that doesn’t have such annoying practices).
And don’t get me started on how HSBC treats international students (£8 a month and no overdraft? And you expect me to cancel my paper statements just to save paper? For that amount I want every cent of value I can get!)
I encourage you to simply change banks.
The banks will (and have to) transfer all your direct debits and payments for you. I changed to Lloyds TSB (currently without a horrid key and with a decent online banking interface) and it was basically painless. I just had to arrange a meeting and go sign some forms.
If you don’t take action and change banks (and tell them why) then you’ll never send any message that this sort of pointless regression isn’t necessary.
There are few things that make me rage more than that little piece of black plastic. I’m glad someone else shares this anguish.
Apparantly it’s easy to transfer current accounts. You don’t even need to contact all your regular DD payees.
It might be worth looking at http://www.moneysavingexpert.com to see if you can find any information about switching.
I’m going to consider switching in a month or two.
I closed my account and moved to Natwest as a direct result of that evil little calculator wannabe. Now I only need a key thingy to setup new payees and I can live with that just about. They moved all my DD and SO automatically. The only problem occurred when HSBC closed my bank account early, swallowing my card in the cash machine, and leaving me stranded without access to my own money. This just reassured me that I’d done the right thing by leaving them.
I will add though was that my biggest problem with their secure key, quite apart from the inconvenience, was that I couldn’t actually press the buttons. I have unusually long fingers and there’s not much strength in them. I had to request the large format secure key which came with headphones and no way to turn off the voiceover. That was the last straw for me.
Apparantly it’s easy to transfer current accounts. You don’t even need to contact all your regular DD payees.
It might be worth looking at http://www.moneysavingexpert.com to see if you can find any information about switching.
I’m going to consider switching in a few months, after Christmas.
Hate the little fecking things too, it amazes me one of these enterprising banks highly paid marketing firms on retainer haven’t thought to suggest ditching them and running a nationwide ad telling people they don’t have this annoying, tiresome extra security feature. They’d win a ton of business.
J.
I noticed that HSBC are holding a competition to all those who log in… “the more you log in, the better chance you have of winning”.
This, I imagine, will increase traffic to compensate for all of us who are avoiding the service because of the shitty key fob. Just so some middle management can say “look, our traffic hasn’t dropped”.
I bit the bullet and transferred to another bank which was totally painless and I had great joy in calling HSBC and telling them the reason was because of their stupid security calculator.
Plus the new bank gave me £100, a massive interest free overdraft & pay interest on credit.
Co-op banking introduced these for personal accounts – not to log in but to authorise transfers. At first it was awful, but then they made it ask for it less when you had e.g. established transactions.
However Co-op Business banking ( a world of fail on every count ) now requires you to use one of these to log in. If you don’t have it with you… you are stuffed. Except you can just phone up and give them “insecure” info over the phone and do what you like. Genius.
Well said…
HSBC has its heart in the right place, just a shame it has its head up its…Canary Warf ivory tower.
I have further issues with this small (but not so small) HSBC fob. Aside from having to log in with it, you also have to use the damn thing to make payments from your account, after you have securely logged in with the fob 2 seconds earlier, but this time you need to use the yellow key, not the green one, and it is partnered with having to enter the last 3 digits of the account you are paying into.
Finally, i also have an HSBC business account, which uses a different fob altogether, so to access my accounts, i need to carry two different access devices.
Convenient and easy…HSBC Internet Banking is far from.
This thread is worth a mention too
(I post quite a bit – especailly see the responses to my letters of complaint)
I didn’t follow through on my threat to leave at the end of July as I’m trying to move house and my mortgage is up in the air, once that is sorted, I’m moving bank
I have got the worst of both worlds – a personal account with HSBC, now fobbed, and a business account with the Co-op, which beat HSBC to the punch by a few months with their little encryption gem. At least the HSBC online experience is (or was) decent – the Co-op’s is dreadful. I’ve been complaining to their head of online for 2 years about how crap their business banking interface is. Absolutely anti-usability to start with and now they toss the fob at you. I know that it’s all for the good of security, but boy is it bad for business. Not just mine, either – theirs. I am walking as soon as I am able. Like many of you I am in the middle of some transactions that need consistency in my banking, but as soon as I’m through that, both personally and professionally, I’m gone.
I also moved to Lloyds because they don’t have a stupid external device based security system. I travel a lot, and carrying around an extra calculator-sized *thing* just to be able to access my online banking just isn’t reasonable.
My previous bank was Barclays, whose online security actually decreased when they introduced their ridiculous devices, because their system no longer required a password if you went through the ‘I forgot my stupid device’ system. I demonstrated to a partner at the time that I could access his account with just standard information you would give to an online shopping site. Don’t know if things have improved any since, but their customer service was always shitty anyway.
I really hope the bankers start seeing this and take it on board!
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I don’t believe there’s any need for this – but it makes them look more secure to all the OAPs who still feel insecure about doing online banking, hence when one bank introduced this, they all have to, otherwise public perception will be that they’re insecure… I feel it’s a stupid sharade then… more marketing than security… but I don’t have time to complain, I’d rather just get on with it. Good to hear others are being more vocal.
‘Twas a good post too, ^_^.
I use to love my internet banking. I’m travelling at the moment and haven’t been able to check my balance/incomings/outgoings for some time now and it’s scary. I’m definitely changing banks when I get home (something I would never have dreamed of doing before this debacle). STUPID IDEA HSBC. STUPID.