Hang Seng Bank - Head Office — Local services in Hong Kong

The WORST HQ Bank I ever experienced.

Hong Kong, a fast paced, not-so-high-tech financial city. The HQ looks impressive with its grande, air-conditioned interior and polished marbled floors, but THE slowest bank, 2nd to HSBC HQ.

Every time I had to simply deposit a check or do any transfers, the average wait time in line is 1-2 hours long. There are two lines, Regular Customers and Preferred Customers. There will always be 3 tellers in the Reg. Line that has 10-20 people lining up, while there will be 5-6 Tellers in the Preferred Line with only 1-5 people lining up. And when it's finally your turn after waiting a century, you'll be done in less than 5 minutes (depending on what you need to do).

And then you have these men in suits that greet you when you go up the escalators that are COMPLETELY useless. I assume they are there to just look good like shop mannequins that don't do anything. They usually just group up around the front counter; laughing and chatting, looking at their phones, meanwhile there are a herd of people lined up for hours. And when their idleness is noticed by customers, they will disperse as quickly as a fart in the wind, and one of them will go to the line and ask "Do you need any help?" What help can they offer while your standing in line with 20 other people? What can they do? NOTHING. Why can't they man the other empty 20 tellers?

And then you have these supervisors walking back and forth to check on the tellers, and they avoid looking at the long line in front of them. Then, they will disappear or migrate towards the Preferred Customer's teller and pretend everything is fine.

You have these old elders or pregnant women that have to stand in line as well, no chairs to offer. The tellers themselves are nice, but you know they are the cannon fodder that bears the brunt of frustrated customers. I usually feel sorry for them.

So if you're a new customer thinking of joining their bank, the application process is a breeze and they treat you like royalty (you actually get to sit down!), and they try to get as much money from you to sign up for their bs insurance program. But after you sign up, expect to be downgraded to a peasant and wait in line for 2 hours, plus receive...

My father’s (who have migrated overseas) bank account has been compromised and was stolen HKD 10,000 last 2021 using a cash card that my father has no knowledge of and did not apply.

We discovered it last year (2024) after going back to HK to withdraw the money. But Hang Seng Bank wasn’t able to help us retrieve the money in any way even after a few months while we are back overseas. The manager even told us not to report to the police first without the bank’s investigation result. Until now, they keep calling for unrelated matters instead of catching the culprit. They said my father needs to report to the police instead to have any progress. They also said they had no record before year 2009 and cannot see who applied for the cash card. My father rarely used the bank account after migrating overseas in the 1990s, only used if government gives out money to its citizens, which is why there is 10k HKD last 2021 in the account.

The account has been with my father since the 80s (or even way before). Someone unauthorized changed the email and mobile phone number associated with the account and applied for the cash card on behalf of my father and stole the money.

I expected positive news from HK because it is a first rate country, however, it seems that banking regulations here in Manila is even way better than how HK handle things despite Philippines being a poorer and less developed country. This kind of incident would never...

Never had such a bad experience with any bank. Untrained staff that cause inconvenience to customers. All I needed was to update my phone number and it cannot be done online. Had to go to the counter (am based overseas for one), queues for eons and finally the staff added the number wrongly and I can't proceed with the voice ID activation. Impossible. Consider twice if you're planning to open an account here. You may end up spending your life on calls with them simply trying to sort...