I used to do all my checking, savings, and have my main credit card with HSBC in Sydney and in NYC. I have a good credit score and was never late on a payment with my credit card, keeping balance usually at $0. I assumed I was a model customer to my bank. In early 2009, I got a notice from HSBC saying they were lowering my available credit limit on my credit card by 97%.

I called HSBC immediately. I explained my shocked disbelief and insisted this must be a mistake to the customer service representative on the phone. She gave no explanation as to why this action had been taken, then went directly into her required up-sell to get me to buy overdraft protection. I hung up on her.

I did some research on "the google" to find answers as to why I was being treated so badly. Turns out, HSBC was dumping a lot of US credit accounts like gangbusters in 2009. In an effort to lighten their insurance on credit risks with customers, they were significantly lowering a lot of those credit accounts they had to insure against, and they were going after a lot of inactive users, as well as zero balance users off whom they weren't making money. Suddenly it made more sense. This was HSBC's answer to weathering the financial crisis. I was lucky - many customers were reporting that HSBC had significantly lowered their available credit limit to a much lower amount than they currently owed, thereby causing them high over-limit credit charges each month.

This pissed me off enough to move all of my business (checking and saving accounts) to another bank, and I stopped using their credit card. It forced me to start shopping around for a better deal on using credit cards and I'm a lot better off for it. However, in my haste, I forgot to close that fledgling credit card at HSBC. It had a zero balance and I never used it so it became a ghost. Every once in a while I would come across it when doing finances and just decided I would get to it late; it was low priority.

Mostly, I just wanted to make another statement: to rage against the machine when I would get around to call. "You can close my account with your crappy bank, I don't use it anymore anyway. I broke up with you and I see another bank now. Your bank and its treatment of its customers really sucks, that's why!" I imagined the call center would forward my recording to someone high up at HSBC and a large man at a table in Hong Kong, while eating caviar, would listen to it. His monocle would fall out and he would scream into the air "Nooo", while I remained on the phone, listening in with smug satisfaction that they would now realize the mistake they had made.

Yesterday, I was doing my finances again and came across the account and decided it was time to make that call. I wrote the number down and on Monday I was going to spoil someone's caviar dinner overseas. Today, I got a letter from HSBC. My account was closed due to inactivity.

Bastards.