My mom had two credit cards at the time of her death, one was issued by Union Bank and the other was issued by Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. So immediately after everything was ironed out a week after she was laid to rest, me and my sisters worked on all the things that needs to be taken care of like death claims including these credit cards. We decided to pay the bill for October still but the teller at Union Bank did not receive our payment because she said she had the same experience when her dad died where the remaining credit was written off.
On October 22, 2009, we sent a letter and a copy of our mom's authenticated death certificate through fax to both Union Bank and HSBC using the numbers that had been indicated on their Billing Statement. However, we did not receive any reply so I wrote them again, but this time through email. I called HSBC's toll-free number and a courteous call center agent named Cielo told me that WE SHOULD PAY OFF THE TOTAL OUTSTANDING BALANCE IN FULL and to send them a copy of the death certificate.
Union Bank Customer Service was very prompt with their reply while HSBC did otherwise. After I sent them my letter, I got a message that says they will reply to me in two days. Two days then one week had passed but there was no reply from HSBC, not until I wrote them again asking them what the hell happened to the two days that they promised but it took several days still for them to sent a reply.
Last week, they called us up at home and my dad took the call. The caller instructed us to send a copy the death certificate to the Collection Dept. That got me thinking where on earth did the letter we sent via fax go? The funny thing is, now they gave us a new toll-free number, not the one that was printed on their Statement. The whole thing was beginning to piss me off. I didn't realize that I was in for a bigger disappointment.
Tonight, immediately after I got home from work, I took out all the bills in the mailbox and found another HSBC Billing Statement for my mom's credit card for this month. Union Bank has stopped sending collection letters right after we informed them about my mom's death, HSBC, on the other hand, continued to collect from us. Here's the most horrible part, they are charging my mom an annual fee of 1,200. It was like, hellouer?!!!!, how can they be so dumb? how can you charge annual fee for someone who could no longer use your credit card?
Leafing through the papers enclosed in the bill, I found HSBC's slogan boldly printed in red and it says " The World's local bank" . If you try to look for synonyms of the word local, you will find that the term synonymous to the words restricted, limited, confined and narrow. So, I guess, their slogan says it all, they live it up. Now, I found the answers I've been wanting.
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