Another advantage of having the no fee account | HSBC | Discussion forum

Patrick said:

Hello, one year ago I subscribed to the "no fee HSBC Advance saving account" witch allow unlimited electronic transactions.

As I am backpacking around South East Asia, I noticed HSBC branches on almost every major cities. So i decided to use my ATM card and withdraw some money.

What was my surprise to notice on my electronic statement the absence of any kind of fees! NO ATM FEES, NO INTERNATIONAL FEES... Nada!!!

I used my HSBC card also on some other random ATM and got charged between 2 and 5$ CAD by the ATM and 3$ from HSBC

All in all, this FREE account really kick ass since there is HSBC locations or ATM almost everywhere in the world!

The weird thing is when contacted, a HSBC representative confirmed to me twice that fees should be charged for withdraw outside Canada even within the HSBC.. anyways..

That's my saving tip.

Well, I read your post 2 days before leaving for France and I had only around $280 liquidity at home and left for 2 weeks with only 200 euros. After about 8 days, I decided to withdraw 100 euros at HSBC ATM in Nice, Cote d'azur to see if they would hit me with some administration fees. Was worth the try since you said that they didn't charge you but were supposed to.

Now I'm warning everybody not to do so since I was charged $3 for administration fees for withdrawing 100 euros during my travel. I could have paid everything by credit card and would have had enough euros for my 2 weeks vacation but seeing the 3 HSBC branches in Nice, I couldn't stop myself to withdraw some euros there.

Fortunately, I did it only once so these 3 bucks are the only administration fees I have paid in the last 5 years.

"April 11, 2011 FRAIS GESTION
ABM S/C
ZZXX08742
-3.00 1,179.17
April 11, 2011 INTERET
INT AU 10-04-11
ZDD400044
1.04 1,182.17
April 11, 2011 RETRAIT ESP GA
NICE GUBERNATIS
#586586000000
ACIC27913
-141.02 1,181.13 "