last week

House repairs

It's only taken us ten years of living here but we've finally had a panel in our kitchen moved over by 1cm so we can actually fit our washing machine fully under the counter. A day for celebration!

Micropreneurs social

Another first-Thursday rolled past this week and hence so did another Redhill Micropreneurs social evening. I'm pleased to report that the trend of at least one new person attending continued, this time with a couple of local property related entrepreneurs. Conversation topics included property investment, property software ;-) , mobile games (and their business models and addictiveness), co-working spaces, interesting books (inc. about Carnegie), the horrors of missing sleep, Lego, running, and several others that I wasn't part of.

Archery

Our eldest took part in a regional Scouts archery competition and managed to come 5th personally (among roughly 50 Scouts) and his team came 4th (among 8 or so). Each Scout pack attended the event separately, hence why I'm not sure exactly how many there were despite staying to watch ours do their part. The result was excellent but actually staying to watch was also great, especially seeing that he was shooting really consistently and his scores weren't flukes at all. Very proud of his effort.

HSBC "safeguarding"

I received a letter from HSBC saying they'll be closing our business accounts in two months. No reason, no suggestion of an alternative. This was the first we'd heard about such a possibility.

Apparently this is part of their "safeguarding" process.

I phoned up to find out more...

• Long queue
• What are your account details?

• What's your telephone banking security number? -- I don't know this so they put me through to a different department to reset it...

• Automated system...

• What's your sort code/account number?

• What's your telephone banking security number? -- What? I'm supposed to be resetting it, how can I possibly provide it!?

• Another queue

• Talk to another person, but on a really bad line that keeps cutting out.
• They confirm they'll reset my phone banking security, they'll just need to ask details about recent transactions. -- I've got my statements, so that should be OK.
• Apparently not, the questions will relate to more recent transactions that I'll need to check online. -- I'm not the person who normally accesses our business accounts online so I don't have my online security token to hand. :-(

When I managed to find it and login, there was a prompt for me to fill in their safeguarding questionnaire - which it turns out is a ridiculously long process with some pretty daft questions!

So having wasted two hours on this I've now provided HSBC with lots of extra information but still don't know if they're going to let us keep our accounts.

At least we did found out earlier than some people, a quick search online provides numerous stories of people who suddenly lost access to their HSBC accounts, seemingly without any warning at all.