Lai See | Customer endures 40 minutes of madness at Hang Seng Bank

One of our readers was recently surprised to receive a letter from the Hang Seng Bank refusing his application to set up a standing order to pay off his Amex card account. At one of the bank's branches he was told there was a problem with his signature in that there was a "slight difference" from the various signatures he'd given the bank when he opened his account seven years ago.

This is despite having signed thousands of cheques during his time with the bank. He pointed out that since he was standing in front of them with his identity card and bank card together with details of his Amex account would they verify his identity and send a note to the back office saying they had established his identity. But no, this was not possible.

So becoming increasingly exasperated, an "angry gweilo" moment was narrowly averted when the staff presented him with a writing pad and said, "If you write your signature again we'll see if it looks like the one we have on record." But after some 12 attempts none of them were close enough despite the best efforts of the staff to coach him how to write a signature that matched the bank's records. "I realised I was trying to forge my own signature," our exasperated reader told Lai See.

Eventually his patience gave out and he told the staff: "Clearly I am trying to commit fraud - you must call the police." At this point the absurdity of the situation dawned on them and after a huddled meeting they pointed to one of the signatures he had written, and told him if could reproduce one like that, they would resubmit his application. So after this 40-minute farce he headed off to the airport not knowing whether Hang Seng would approve his application. You would have difficulty making this up.