Thursday 17 January 2008

Bank Given Foul-Mouthed Sentence

HSBC Ordered To “Go Fuck Themselves”


In a landmark ruling, the High Court has ordered the high street bank HSBC to “Go fuck themselves, with immediate effect.”

The decision was made during the judge’s summing-up in a test case over bank charges yesterday. Tony Ebbsfleet, a mussel farmer from Cornwall, took HSBC to court over what he felt to be “unreasonable, excessive and frankly sodding ridiculous” deductions from his account over the past five years.

“On one occasion, I’d stepped into my local branch to get out of the rain for a couple of minutes.” said Ebbsfleet. “Well, bugger me if a few days later I didn’t get a letter telling me they were going to charge me £49.99 for the privilege. When I queried it, they gave me some guff about ‘excessive carpet use’ and ‘unauthorised lobby access’. And then they sent me another letter saying they were going to charge me another twenty quid for the explanation letter.”

Ebbsfleet attempted to resolve the situation using HSBC’s standard complaints procedure, which the High Court heard was a four-part system of:

1: Losing the initial letter.
2: Hanging up the phone whenever a complainant called or putting on a funny voice and saying “Me never heard of Mr HSBC. Very sorry.”
3: Claiming the member of staff concerned was possessed by the God Isis and as such not responsible for their actions.
4: Writing to the customer, making vaguely threatening comments about how easy identity theft could be and how flammable their money is.

Ebbsfleet, dissatisfied with this, continued to press on with his complaint only to find that further charges had been levied. These ranged from ‘unauthorised overdraft charges’ and ‘declined direct debits’ to ‘handling of wrongly-shaped pounds’ and ‘Maureen’s leaving present’.

“I finally lost my rag” said Ebbsfleet. “I wrote them a letter saying that if they wanted their money, they could go shit in their hand and toss it at a unicorn. When they threatened me with court action, I decided to take it all the way to the top.”

In his summary, Judge Emsley Fox stated “While Mr Ebbsfleet’s suggestion of hand-shitting may have been unreasonable, it is our finding that HSBC’s actions over the past five years have been unprofessional, intimidatory and in many cases bloody childish. We rule that all charges against Mr Ebbsfleet’s account should be reimbursed forthwith. Furthermore, I order that HSBC go and take a running fuck at themselves, with immediate effect. If they fail to do so, I shall have no hesitation in further ordering that they shove their call centres up their arses.”

Judge Fox also recommended that Natwest should “Fuck right off as well.”

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