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Facebook campaign prompts HSBC turnaround
HSBC has been forced to implement an embarrassing U-turn regarding its planned overdraft changes on graduate accounts, following a campaign spearheaded by social networking website Facebook.The bank announced this week that it would be cancelling the graduate overdraft charges which were announced in June. Almost 250,000 students were forced to pay interest on their overdraft after HSBC introduced a 9.9 per cent interest rate in August.
More than 4,000 angered graduates on Facebook joined a group set up by Wes Streeting, vice president of the National Union of Students (NUS), called 'Stop the great HSBC graduate rip-off'. The NUS said that it believed the influence of Facebook to be crucial in convincing HSBC to change its mind.
"Running the campaign through Facebook has been tremendously successful," Streeting explained. "I think it's tremendous that such a huge amount of pressure has resulted in a change of policy for HSBC."
A spokesman for the company told the Guardian: "We are a service-orientated organisation and we have to listen to our customers - that is a priority for us."
In a statement, the bank admitted that it wasn't too large to ignore the needs of its customers and would be freezing interest charges for graduates.
Online Advertising news posted on 03 September 2007
