HSBC slated over misleading advertisement
May 21, 2008
The HSBC has recently been reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Agency over an advertisement that the bank was running, which has been branded as misleading by some of its rivals as well as by the ASA. The advertisement claimed that HSBC customers could enjoy the benefits of fee free cash withdrawals when using their cards abroad, but failed to mention that the foreign transaction fee would still charge, which normally amounts to around 2.75% of the amount withdrawn. The Advertising Standards Agency has stated that this is still construed as a fee, and therefore the bank cannot claim to offer fee free cash withdrawals.
The advertisement that was being by the bank claimed: “Whoever’s on the banknotes, with Bank Account Plus you can withdraw them worldwide and we won’t charge you.” The bank has now been told by the Advertising Standards Agency that it must stop running the advertisement until it has made changes that will make it clear to consumers that there will still be a foreign transaction charge applied to the withdrawal. In the original advertisement no mention of the fee was made not was any information about it displayed on screen.
A spokesperson from the Advertising Standards Agency stated: “Because there was no mention of the exchange rate fee in the on-screen text, and because we understood that cash machine withdrawals from overseas ATMs always incurred this charge, we concluded that the ad was misleading.” The Advertising Standards Agency decided to launch the investigation after another bank made a complaint about the advertisement, branding it as misleading.
The advertisement led consumers to believe that they could withdraw cash completely free of charge no matter what type of currency they were withdrawing, despite the fact that the 2.75% foreign transaction fee is still charged.
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