HSBC slammed over holiday ad
HSBC has been criticised by an advertising watchdog, over misleading claims that customers would not be charged for making cash withdrawals overseas in one of its advertsThe Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has ruled that the advert in question - which shows shots of foreign currency, with the tagline "Whoever's on your banknotes with bank account plus you can withdraw them worldwide and we won't charge you" - must be scrapped.In fact, HSBC levy a charge of 2.75 per cent on currency conversions when withdrawing cash abroad, which the ASA concluded was "essentially a transaction fee".An ASA spokesperson said: "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."HSBC maintains that the charge is not a transaction, but did say that it did apply an exchange rate to "any foreign exchange transaction" that fully complied with banking code requirements.
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