This POS deserves to rot. I’m sure there’s a spot waiting in hell for the people who think he was a helpless victim too.
Month: March 2009
This morning I went to use my HSBC credit card to pay for some gas and was told to see the attendant. That’s odd I thought, but since I was in a hurry I tried another card and everything worked fine. I didn’t really think much about the incident and figured it was just an issue with the payment terminal… until I got home and found a letter from HSBC. The letter, dated two days earlier, stated:
This is to inform you that we will be sending you a replacement HSBC credit card with a new account number due to a security breach. Although this breach was not caused by us, we are taking this precautionery step to reduce the risk to your Account. Providing our cardmembers with a safe and credit card experience is one of our top priorities.
The letter then goes on to say when I can expect my new card and how to activate it. No explanation of what happened or how my account was compromised. Way to step up and take responsibility HSBC! WTF? You turn off my card and use snail mail to notify me. Somebody, but not you, got hacked and my info was compromised – but you give me no details on how this happened or which company was breached. Was it a partner? Was it someone you contracted with? And how much of my personal information was possibly stolen? Way to be upfront HSBC! Doing the bare minimum required by law to inform me of the situation shows me how truly dedicated you are to making security a “top priority”.
UPDATE:
Turns out that Heartland Payment Systems, a payment processor, was the company that got hacked. Heartland is now being sued for damages by the banks and credit unions impacted by the data breach. The breach has already affected over 500 financial institutions and may be the largest ever disclosed. Banks started replacing cards back in February, but I guess it wasn’t a “top priority” at HSBC until mid-March. More information about the breach is available from Heartland at the appropriately titled 2008 Breach website.
This is something that has really been getting on my nerves lately. You ask someone a question and they don’t answer. This can be face-to-face, over the phone, by email, on facebook or wherever. You ask a question and the other person ignores it or answers with a question. For example, you ask the simple question “What would you like for dinner tonight?” and the response “What would you like for dinner?” Is that an echo I hear?
Every day I deal with sales people trying to sell me this or that and they are the absolute worst about answering direct, clear as crystal questions. For example, a common question might be “How many unique visitors does your site have?” and the typical response “We are the greatest thing since sliced bread and you know, [insert their competitor’s name] isn’t even in our class.” Did I ask about your competitor or sliced bread? A simple “We have 30,000 visitors per month,” would have sufficed. Heaven forbid you ask more than one question over email. You might as well have sent a blank email because the response will have nothing to do with anything relevant.
A perfect example is a salesperson who I had to deal with this week. It was Friday afternoon and they suddenly got it in their head that they had to do a deal in the next two hours. Mind you, this isn’t the first time they’ve pulled this stunt. “You need to sign this contract right now because I’ve got three other people waiting to take this spot if you don’t want it… and oh yeah, it is 10 times more expensive than last year and everyone else is willing to pay full price.” Several things are wrong with this tactic – but I will save that for another post. In the response to their kind offer (they, after all, took the time to email us out of “courtesy” because we already work with them), it clearly stated there are several questions that need answering before we can make a decision. The almost instantaneous response failed to answer a single one and went straight back to “Now or else!”
Well – I wish them luck selling their crap ad space with the oversupply of ad inventory that exists and the crummy economy further depressing prices.