Suprised to see this thread popping back up after so long
Have to say that we have started offering Paypal as an alternative when the HSBC are down and they are a nightmare to deal with.
It took ages to find a phone number and then the system asked me for a pin number which I thought I didn't have but turned out to be on the page that the phone number was on!
They have a voice activated telephone system that doesn't offer you an option to speak to a person ... although does respond to the voice command "Put me through to a b***** person!".
They won't give you a name so you can keep a record of who is supposed to be dealing with your problem ... apparently "It's not company policy".
And something which was supposed to take 24 hours to sort out took just over a full working week.
I have seriously thought about switching to Protx but as a small business we chose HSBC because the money you claim from your customer is available in your account the following working day which is quite useful when funds are tight.
Things were on the up and waiting for settlement wouldn't have been a problem a few months ago but now that people have stopped buying and sales are down I need all my funds to be accessable to pay the bills.