Hell's bells!

[Guest brosville]

I'm designing a client a website that is to feature e-commerce - having wrestled with oscommerce2 and Zencart, I'm very gratified to have found CubeCart - it does what it says on the tin! - much impressed, thankyou!

As part of it's setup, I've been trying to get together some comparisons so my client could judge which payment gateway would suit his needs best. I visited the "Protx" website - all the figures were available upfront, no faffing, this is what we charge! My client banks with HSBC, so it appeared logical to contact them for details of their system - I tried the website(s) for nearly an hour - the information just didn't exist online, so I 'phoned the 0800 number listed on the relevant page - "oh this isn't the right number sir" (despite it being shown as THE number on the website, and gave me an "0845" number to call - this said to me "hang on a mo - this is going to COST me, for them to sell me their blasted system!) - I pressed on! - the gentleman in Bangalore to whom I was connected categorically stated that he was unable to give me any figures whatsoever - so in desperation, I asked for a supervisor - the line went dead, he then returned, bright as a button "this is the number you need sir" - an "020" number - this was unstaffed after 5pm!, so I returned to the original number, and started again - this time I was given another number - this was "line withdrawn" - I returned to the original number AGAIN, and demanded a supervisor straight away (having had to sit through the "designed to annoy" - sit and listen to umpteen irrelevant options, voiced by a congenital imbecile, who insisted on saying "haitch sbc" every time - I asked the supervisor to pin her ears back whilst I gave her both barrels - after a couple of minutes she lamely suggested she could get a sales team member to call me tomorrow - I left her in no uncertainty that any organisation which displays the arrogance and disdain for the "mug punter" that they do, do not deserve mine or anybody elses business, and that I would be recommending to all my clients that they don't touch them with the proverbial bargepole. For heaven's sake, the arrogance - well, we might condescend to rob you blind for collecting a few electronic payments electronically, but we won't divulge our rip off pricing openly, instead we employ the double-glazing salesman's tactic of "let's put a salesman onto them, and justify the ludicrous price, and try to bamboozle them into signing up"

On yer bike HSBC!