The reason I joined HSBC...

When you see the title to this post you may be thinking, what is she going to talk about, why does she need to tell us what bank she joined. Well there is a story to it that I thought some people might like.

Just before I tell the story, I am very happily no longer with HSBC, I am now with Barclays and much happier, I really never liked HSBC!

When I was in secondary school in my first year, like a lot of schools, we had a bank come and visit, the bank that came to us was HSBC, I was very young and impressionable, as you can imagine only being 11 years old!

We all were sat down in the assembly hall, watching and listening with amazement, they were offering us a bank account, I already had one with Santander, but it didn't have a card, or anything just a book that you had to use to pay in and pay out, very old fashioned these days I know! First of all they told us we could have a SOLO card, so we could take money out at cash points, but we were not able to pay for things with it.

This idea really excited me, then they showed us an example of the card we would get, it had CDs all over it! I was so excited thinking oh yeah! I will be a grown up with a bank card, next they told us we would be able to pay money into our account every Friday at school as someone would come in to collect our money. I thought GREAT this means I can save all my dinner money, as I never actually ate anything really at school, and pay that in ready to spend and take out of my account.

All these things were getting me more and more excited, then they dropped the final thing that was about to make me so excited!

We were told we would get a FILOFAX! It wasn't a brand Filofax but it was a cheap version much like the metropol, in black. I don't remember if it said HSBC on it, but I was so excited with this prospect of getting a Filofax I signed up straight away when I got home.

We had to fill out forms to get the account of our dreams, and to get the free Filofax.

A few weeks later my shiny card came in the post! I was as excited as I expected, it was so cool, I was grown up with a bank card.

But the issue was my Filofax didn't come with the Filofax, I don't even remember receiving a Filofax, I think they got me all excited to get a Filofax and never gave it to me, I have no recollection of receiving it!

That was my disappointing end to my story.

But it shows never sign up to a bank account just because you are offered a Filofax......