The Experience Of Cancelling HSBC’s Credit Card

deddy
Photo by Mark OFlynn on Unsplash

Well, not smooth. Yes. That’s all. Thank you for reading. Just kidding, allow me to share with you how the whole thing went.

So, it is 2024 and in Singapore, digitalising stuff is just the norm, or kinda should be the norm. This is especially true for banks.

Banks in Singapore are relatively big. They are also always trying to be at the forefront of anything digital. This in turns, will make the customers’ life a lot easier, as well as their own employees’.

So, cancelling a credit card is just something that is kinda expected to be able to be done through their ibanking mobile app. If you haven’t read my experience with Standard Chartered, you can read it here.

For HSBC (Singapore), well, to be honest I am not sure if it is the Singapore branch or not because the person servicing you can be from anywhere pretty much. If anybody would like to cancel their credit card, you can either call or chat through their app. If you have been using their stuff, their chat is actually something as their app isn’t as complete with features, but you can talk about anything through their chat. On top of that, their chat has this integration in which it can tell you are authorized because of your login plus the security code. This is awesome.

However, there is a downside to that. With chat and not many features, when you file for something, you can’t really check it through your ibanking app. This is frustrating and it happened to me.

The Process

When you would like to chat to cancel your card, you will first be chatting with their chat bot. You will need to provide the details like your last four-digit card numbers, reason and stuff. Pretty standard. However, things don’t stop there. The chat bot will actually redirect you to talk to one of their live agents, basically the employee instead.

When the employee came on, he/she will basically tell you to wait while the person is checking. So, usually they will be checking on all your outstandings. If you have none, then they will file a request or cancel it on the spot for you. I mean, the chat was done live, so I thought everything will be done live on the spot as well. Right? Just like in a call.

No, the person proceeded on to telling you the benefit of your credit card one by one. Initially I found it odd. This is because I knew what the benefits are for the credit card, that’s why I signed up in the first place. Just for you to know, here is the card that I used to use.

Source: HSBC

The card’s pretty good honestly. Unfortunately, I was doing consolidation and after trying to match with my needs, I had to let it go.

However, the odd part is that the person first started to tell me 1 benefit of the card, then waited for me to response. After I acknowledged that I knew it, the person then replied with another benefit and asked if I would like to reconsider. This went on and I caught it. I was like, this person is trying to get me back so I just mentioned how I had decided, and I knew the benefits, so please just cancel the card.

The person went on with another benefit. At this point, it had taken like half an hour and this is probably the longest one I had ever been dealing with this kind of matter. So I went on to just tell the person that I knew the person is trying to get me back, telling me the benefits one by one although I don’t understand why the person tried to tell one after another instead of at one shot, and I really appreciated it but no thanks.

At some point, the person still is going on and I decided like please just stop and cancel my card. It was only then that the person just told me within seconds the person had filed a request to cancel my card. A request. After more than half an hour.

Normally when a request is filed to cancel your card, it takes either within 3 working days or 5 working days for it to be done. But what I didn’t expect was that instead of cancelling the card, I got a request filed instead. Naturally I was a bit taken aback and I asked again like I had to wait?

It was pretty much a yes to that. It is alright. Then I asked if I will get a notification on the submission of the request. Short answer, no. No SMS, no push notification, no email, nothing. On top of that, you can’t check the status of your request submission either. You just have to wait for an SMS from them. For this bank, they will tell you that it will take 3-5 working days for them to process.

At this point, you just have to wait. If you haven’t received any SMSes from them after 5 working days, you can still make a call to them through their hotline.

For my case though, I received the SMS after 3 working days. The content will state that your card ending with so and so number has been cancelled or terminated. If there is any outstanding, they will notify you. Although they never mention how you should deal with your card, always remember to dispose them properly.

Wrap Up

Always remember to be responsible when you are using credit cards. If you can’t control yourself, don’t use a credit card, let alone credit cards. Talk to your financial advisor when you have any doubts.

With that, thank you for reading my rant. If you think these might be helpful to other people, feel free to share. Also, I am not a professional and this article is by no means an advice to buy nor sell. Always do your own research. Believe in yourself and not other people.

Thank you for reading.

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