HSBC Direct Sucks

It all started innocently. Since I was earning a few bucks during my internship, I thought it would help if I saved a couple of dollars (especially since I won't have an on campus job to support me next sem). I suppose I could have transferred it to my Bank of America Savings acoount, but we all know money in the same account as the direct deposit one would be spent soon. So I started looking for a good savings account and found that online banks offer better interest rate. Since I didn't have a car to get by, I assumed that it would be easier to open an account online. Right? WRONG!

when I started looking for online banks, I had 2 options - HSBC Direct and ING. Since HSBC was offering 3.5% as opposed to the 3% offered by ING. Also HSBC allowed me to link how many ever accounts I wanted to the Savings account. Naturally I tried to open an account. It seemed easy enough - fill out basic details and then the trial deposits. But even after confirming my trial deposits, my account was pending - awaiting documentation. They said that they needed some form of address proof (bank statement, utility bill) and so on. Since I am now in Wisconsin, I ask my roommates to send over some utility bills. And I fax them and wait for the prescribed 48 hours, which then becomes 72 hours. So I call the Customer Service. After waiting for nearly 15 minutes (while listening to "exxccitng" new from HSBC) I reach a human. She tells me that they didn't receive the fax and ask me to resend it. By this time I am a little impatient and so I resend the fax and wait another 3 days. I get am email reminding me to send it again. I was raving mad when I picked the phone and called them. They tell me that they did receive the document, but the bill was older then 60 days (it was 63 days old) and so they cannot use it. This seems reasonable enough, but nobody told me this while opening the account. And would it have killed them to send me an email rather than wait for me to call them?? So I fax over another document that's pretty recent and send it out on the same day (last Wednesday morning). On Friday I give them a call to hear them say that they didn't receive the fax and that a specialist would call me on Monday morning 8:00 a.m. It's 10:00 a.m and no call. So I give them a call and after waiting for an eternity I am told that they didn't receive my fax. And when I complain about how it's 3 weeks now since I started to open my account, the customer rep tells me "You are not the only applicant you know"!!!

I have cancelled my application with them and opened one with ING. The experience has been pleasant and hassle free till now. I talked to a Customer Service agent before opening the account (and I got a human within 2 minutes). She was polite and assured me that they needed no documentation from me. Plus I was referred by someone and so I get a $25 referral bonus. Sweeet! And since I am not going to be saving millions, a 0.5% doesn't matter much, in fact it might be lesser than the $25 I earned. And if I things go well with my Savings account, I will open a Checking account with them and you can link as many accounts you want with that. Plus you can write checks. So it's win win win for me.

HSBC just lost themselves a loyal customer (hopefully the business of the people reading this blog too). I am not a person who chases after interest and I would have stuck to them for years.

So the moral of the story is : HSBC Stinks. And it pays to have a good Customer Support and Admin system.

P.S Wanted to write a post on something else, but HSBC irritated me so much that I had to put this up. I am usually patient with such things 'coz once you get the system rolling, you don't have to worry about other things. But they really got my goat.

Ashok Banker's Ramanaya - Well Worth a Miss

After writing about something I loved in my last post, I think I am back to what I like most - cribbing :-)

First if this book, Prince of Ayodhya by Ashok Banker. It is supposed to be a retelling of the Ramayana. It had some very good reviews and had a bunch of people raving about it in the comments too. I should have known that every well read blog has its own bunch of Yes-men. I went through a lot of trouble to get this book, since it wasn't available in US and all that and S had to literally beg his colleague to bring this back when he went back to India. I was ecstatic when I finally got it and was devising means to smuggling the other parts from India. Now, I think I will pass. The book is just short of a trivialization of the Ramayana. It's a sort of Harry Potter meets India kinda book, the sort of one that will make good selling.

Given the rise of popularity of fantasy books these days, he has just made use of a good story and written in a racy manner. If it is one thing I hate, it is written Hinglish or Tanglish. Why Banker chose to intersperse dialogues with colloquial Hindi is something I don't understand. It isn't as if all dialogues are in Hindi, why choose to write just a few in Hindi? I can understand use of some sanskrit words like brahman, but why Hindi?? And he's added a lot of cheese to his book. For example, Lakshmanan is called Luck and Shatrugnan is called Shot! These reminded me of those Danish Prophet cartoons. I wonder if anyone in the Shiv Sena has read this book. Another thing that rankled me was the use of the phrase "brahman sorcery" very freely. What does Banker want to convey with this? I have not read the original Ramayana by Valmiki or Kamban and my source is mainly grandma stories and the TV. I don't want him to conceal facts about Dasaratha's wives or Lord Rama's follies. I just wish he would choose a language to write in (Hindi/English/Assamese or whatever) and stick to it.

If you think of it as just another book, leaving the religious part aside, I would say the book is well written. The narration is fast and descriptive. But another irritating thing that Banker does is to switch between scenes in the same chapter without warning. It is misleading and quite annoying especially towards the end. I suggest he read The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud to see how it should be handled. Also the review I read, gave an impression that Banker's works contained soft porn - it talked of orgasms and fondling of breasts. I've read the whole book and there is no mention of those anywhere! You can buy these books for kids - the ones who loved Harry Potter would love these too.

Final verdict: Read if you want to reread the Ramayana and don't have the patience to read lengthy Sanskrit translations

P.S. Coming up next post, a list of characters I absolutely hate from famous sitcoms. Any ideas?

Dasavatharam

First day first show! Even earlier than that - 8:00 p.m CST on 12th June. :-) And did I love the movie!

The reviews have not been too kind. But the best one was the one by Hindu. This is not a Hey Ram. It's director's movie through and through and it has to be taken with a grain of salt. People's stupidity on saying that the Afghan character is silly makes me laugh. Do they mean to say that they've never met anyone like that? And honestly I loved the comedy scenes. Its an out and out action entertainer. People watch Indiana Jones and rave about it and yet can't seem to like Dasavatharam which I feel is much much better. Maybe its acceptable for Speilberg to churn out masala but not Kamal Hasan. Or perhaps they had already made up their mind to hate the movie even before it was released. But then I am just another Kamal fan with a blog that no-one reads :-) Please do go to the theatre and watch this movie. Or don't watch it all but do NOT watch it on a pirated CD/DVD.

I am not going to do a review 'coz I don't want to give away spoilers. I loved the movie through and through. It had me laughing in some parts, crying in others and spellbound in most parts. I think Appa can now be a little relieved that his girl has some amount of Iyengar ness in her, 'coz the scenes of Govindarajar moved me to tears that my Lord had faced all this in the past. I am thankful to this movie for a near perfect portrayal of brahmins, especially Iyengars after the mockery that was Anniyan. The diction, pronunciation, costume was authentic.

The few people who still read my blog, do go and watch the movie as soon as you can!