Kafka has taken over HSBC.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Quite. Although perhaps not immediately obvious.

I was quite surprised I couldn't get a PAYG sim in my local Tesco.

[charles]

With another Charityb account, one of our trustees was found guilty of an offence and sentenced to 2 years in prison, The bank rang me the next day saying the person was not suitable to be a signatory.

[Max Demian]

Just buy phone vouchers from your local shop. (O2 will do if they don't have giffgaff.)

[John J]

I'm with HSBC and they have used the my voice is my password system for at least a couple of years.

[John Bryan]

Totally agree with that.

The club has been using this account for over 60 years. The treasurer and I have been running it coming up twenty years Cheques and direct debit mandates requiring two signature. When VAT went digital we had to contact HMRC and explain that not all businesses are run in their imagined world!

We got a letter this summer from them asking who,where and what we are in the world. Personal ID of principal officers and even supply a copy of a corporation tax bill, that we do not have being a non-profit organisation.

Absolute tossers. Some young idiot sat in an office generating work for very long established and responsible customers.

I am the sole person operating the internet banking with HSBC for at least four years on the Club account without any problems.

[alan_m]

But the Giffgaff PAYG has become expensive - the upside is that the PAYG (unused) credit doesn't expire after a set time. The phone must be used once every 180? days to keep the number alive.

I have one of their SIMs (on PAYG) in my house alarm which sends regular "I'm still alive" text messages and other messages if the alarm is tripped. I also keep a cheap throw away phone in my car with a GG PAYG SIM.

[alan_m]

You can log into your account and manually add credit by debit or credit card or Paypal. You can also set a lower limit where it triggers and automatic transfer of money from what ever source you have registered with them.

[alan_m]

I've had problems with Barclaycard when they have asked how much I spent with XXYY when the trading name XXYY bears no obvious relationship to the name of the shop I purchased goods in. Or wanting confirmation of the EXACT amount spent on something two weeks ago - around £50 wasn't good enough as an answer.

[alan_m]

Most want the the original documents sent to them!

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

you can't beat 1 2 3 3 or o2 as was

[John Rumm]

Yup true, but for emergency use the price is less important. For regular use, the £6 goodybag deal is not bad (and comparable to the deal from IDMobile etc).

[Martin Brown]

They routinely lose them. I was signing cheques on the basis of a mandate they lost more than two years prior before it came to light that I was not an authorised signatory.

Worse still two people who were long since dead were still on the account. It is very hard indeed to get them to sign a mandate form!

We always photocopy such mandate submissions going forward and log the date of submission. The bank won't accept the photocopy of course but it makes filling the next one in a bit easier (unless they have improved the form).