I thought the whole process was ridiculous but I have learned docility over the years so I set about jumping through their hoops. By grinning at a webcam as I showed my passport they were happy to accept that I was me. Proving where I live has been a little more difficult.
Now we're not going to talk about the fact that they have been posting things to me at this address for years or that the original account with them was opened in around 1972 and has been at the same branch since 1979. We won't dwell on the fact that, whilst the need for the bank to verify the address of their customers is an external regulatory requirement, the process for collecting the data is purely up to the bank. No, we're going to accept the possibility that I may be the front man for a Serbian money launderer and that this process is not a fatuous waste of time and money.
I've mentioned before that rural Spanish addresses are a bit hit and miss. Living, as I do, in the 21st Century most of my bills are paperless anyway so precision of the address isn't important. I can obviously print the bills out from the computer but the bank wanted originals sent through the post. They also wanted bills with EXACTLY the same address as the one they had on their records. As chance would have it none of my bills have that exact address.
I have talked to several people at the bank over the months. Most of them have been perfectly pleasant. They were often quite human, quite flexible. In fact last Autumn I was told to forget the whole process until I got a letter from the UK tax people in April. When I got a tax coding that set the whole rigmarole in train again. There have been a lot of phone calls, secure messages and emails since then. The bank hasn't been moving quickly though. Between one question and an answer I had to wait over two months for a reply. Today, after another lengthy phone call and lots of blether the solution that my customer care team representative came up with was to change my address on the HSBC website so that it matched the one on my phone bill.
The woman didn't seem to grasp the contradiction of the suggestion. In order to prove that my address was real I needed to change it. I didn't argue too much though. After all it's an easy fix.
So, now my phone bill address and the address the HSBC holds are the same. All I have to do is to get our local notary to certify the bill as real before sending it back to the UK. That done the HSBC will be able to sleep soundly knowing that their records are accurate.
There was though a teensy weensy potential stumbling block. The HSBC wanted the notary to use a particular form of words - I, [full name of certifier], confirm this is an accurate copy of the original. I pointed out to the HSBC that a document written in English wouldn't have any legal validity in Spain and that the notary may be unwilling to certify anything using a foreign langauge. The bank were suitably imperialistic about the need to use English.
And guess what the Notary said? We can validate the phone bill but not in English. I told them to go ahead anyway. When it's done I'll shove the confirmation in the envelope and send it back to Harry Weston road in Coventry and wait for the next round of negotiations.
