Star Comment: Customer service is cast aside

Market Drayton and Whitchurch are not small towns, not in Shropshire terms anyway, and they will soon be without their HSBC banks.

Convenience and profit for the bank has trumped the convenience and interests of HSBC's customers who have been brought up on old fashioned banking.

The reasoning behind it is that everybody is now using the internet, and if they are not, then they should learn, and if they will not or cannot learn, well that's tough.

Going back to those old fashioned values, there used to be something called customer service, in which the customer was king (or queen). Banks, shops, firms, or whatever, strove to serve the interests of the customers. Now things are turned on their head, with customers forced to serve their interests, to change their habits, and to have all the inconvenience on their shoulders, and to be happy about it at the same time.

Shop around? Look around. All the banks are closing branches. This is due to the rise of internet banking and telephone banking which is seeing fewer people stepping inside a bricks and mortar bank.

Those physical structures have staff, who have to be paid for, and upkeep expenses. Get rid of the staff, close the branch, force people into virtual banking. . . and you are cutting costs and boosting profits.

Those voices asking about customer service are pushed to the margins, as if they are dinosaurs with nothing relevant to say.

Meanwhile those customers without computer access will now have to make alternative arrangements.

Having taken this step, it is now up to HSBC to do all it can to help those who are going to be affected. Some will adapt to the change very easily, but some will be loyal customers of decades' standing and that loyalty should count for something, even in the world of banking.

It is progress, they say. But events in recent days underline the potential perils of the online world, which is the 21st century equivalent of the Wild West, a playground for sophisticated fraudsters.