HSBC could lose our visually impaired cyclists their hard-won holiday

Photograph: Keith Leighton/Alamy

I am the leader of a tandem club that enables visually impaired riders to enjoy cycling. But our summer holiday to the Netherlands is in jeopardy because our €6,590 (£5,667) deposit has gone missing between our HSBC account and the hotel in Leiden.

At the start of the summer, I made a group booking for the club, and was asked by the hotel to pay a 50% deposit by no later than 1 July. On 23 June I went to our local HSBC branch with a club colleague to transfer the cash.

However, three weeks later, the hotel got in touch to say it had not received our money, so I went back to the branch and staff tried to trace the payment.

The branch manager escalated the matter and initiated the complaints procedure, but the money has now been missing since 23 June and no one has an answer as to its whereabouts.

If the club doesn’t pay the full amount due by 1 August the hotel says it will cancel the booking and resell the rooms.

For our members their financial contribution to the trip is hard won; most are not employed and some are subsidised by the sighted members to enable them to afford to go on holiday. We can’t cover the deposit again.

At this point, we stand to lose our holiday, which also includes the money we have spent on our ferry crossing. We are almost out of time.

RR, Hull

The good news is we were able to help save your club’s holiday and the group should be arriving in the Netherlands about now.

International payments can face additional checks and, in this case, they took much longer than they should have. After we got in touch, HSBC returned the original payment to the club’s bank account and your second attempt to pay for the holiday, via bank transfer, went without a hitch.

HSBC is sorry for the delay and has credited the club’s account with compensation by way of apology. It says: “We aim to provide a high level of service and, regrettably, this experience did not meet the standards we strive for.”

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