A MUM-of-three was mortified when she was suddenly blocked from her bank account with no warning – and no way of buying food for her kids.
Demi Wellings from Northfield, Birmingham, can’t access any money to buy food or heat her home just as her three children have broken up for half term.
The 35-year-old said her son was in tears when she rang HSBC on Wednesday afternoon to query why her card had been mysteriously declined over a bottle of milk.
Yet the customer services representative couldn’t explain why she’d been banned from making any payments or using online banking.
Demi has used a standard bank account with HSBC for over a year to receive her benefits and pay her bills.
But now the family only has enough food to last for the next few days and cannot afford to pay for heating.
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The mum even had to take her little son to the doctor on Thursday morning for a fever that she thinks was the result of a "freezing" night’s sleep.
She said: “I don’t have any family that I can turn to. Literally it’s me and my children and I’m going to be absolutely b******* with my finances.
“I don’t know how I’m going to be able to get food, I couldn’t even get milk yesterday.
"I’m just so stressed, I don’t know where to turn to if I'm honest.
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“I need to feed my children somehow but I don’t know how I’m meant to do it.”
After the shocking discovery and unhelpful first phone call to HSBC, Demi made eight calls over the next 48 hours to a customer services team she described as “disgusting”.
She claimed that when she called the bank they repeatedly spoke to her rudely and on three separate occasions hung up because they couldn’t answer her questions.
Demi added: “They’ve locked me out completely, I’ve rang up eight times now, been spoken to very rudely, had the phone put down on me, telling me they can’t put me through to anybody.
“Basically, last night I explained this – I need access to my money, I have two young children under the age of 10, I had no milk last night, I didn’t get any gas so we were absolutely freezing.
“Their words from HSBC were, ‘Well it’s unfortunate about the children’, which was absolutely disgusting.”
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Demi said one HSBC representative told her she can still access her money by making a cash withdrawal at her local branch.
But after she explained that she can't leave the house due to her mental health, she was allegedly told it wasn't HSBC’s problem.
She added: “I explained my extenuating circumstances of my mental health – I'm unable to do so.
"And yet again their reply was, ‘It’s nothing to do with us. It’s unfortunate there’s nothing we can do.’
“It’s their favourite word – unfortunate.”
Demi normally uses her card to order online groceries and pay for gas to heat the home, but will have to go without both for the time being.
She said: “I’ve got a little bit [of food], obviously it’s not going to be able to tie me over for long.
“We were frozen and then my son woke up this morning poorly and he’s had to go to the doctors.
I'm still disgusted
“He’s had a high temperature, probably to do with how cold it was.”
Demi was fuming about her treatment by HSBC’s customer service team.
She said: “They refused to give us the call reference numbers, they said they don’t have them.
“They refused to give us their names, everything. I had a pen and paper to hand.
“I’m still disgusted, I was actually getting physically sick to my stomach this morning because of the stress and I suffer from depression.
“And my partner’s disabled and he had to try and run to the other side of Birmingham last night to borrow money off his mum to try and get us a bottle of milk.”
A spokesperson for HSBC said: “We take customer service extremely seriously and are sorry that Ms Wellings has not had a good experience.
“We are looking at her complaint and the allegations she has made as a matter of urgency, however, her account is currently under review and is inhibited while we comply with our statutory requirements.
“We apologise, as we know this may cause uncertainty and inconvenience, and we aim to complete our review as quickly as possible.”
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