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Josephine Lewis (59) in an interview room with him for half an hour despite her screams of “let me out”.
The bank manager, who is still in charge of the HSBC branch, blocked her exit until she filled out a form detailing her spending. She was only released when other staff heard her cries.
HSBC then harassed her with hundreds of “abusive and threatening” phone calls. She received up to eight a day over an 18-month period.
Now, after a three-year legal battle – which she paid for with her late mother’s life savings – she has finally received an apology. After going into the red in 2008, Miss Lewis tried to get on top of her debts, even taking on two jobs. But overdraft charges kept mounting up. She asked to have her account frozen, but HSBC ignored her.
Eventually she was paying £279 a month in fees – a third of her take-home pay – and owed £2 000. Desperate to put things right, she visited her local branch in Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, on October 2 2008. She was ushered into a small interview room by Mr Hicks, who closed the door behind them.
After a conversation about her debts, Miss Lewis became upset and got up to leave. But she said Mr Hicks locked the door and stood in her way.
“I was locked in there for between 20 minutes and half an hour,” she said. “It was scary – he was a big man. I was only let out when two of his colleagues heard me shouting.”
Miss Lewis made a complaint about the incident, but it was investigated by Mr Hicks himself and CCTV footage was deleted.
In written evidence, Mr Hicks recalled Miss Lewis becoming very upset and shouting to be let out, but he denied blocking her exit and claimed locking the door was company protocol.
At Swindon County Court, district judge Tacey Cronin dismissed this. She ruled that Mr Hicks “prevented Miss Lewis from leaving the interview room and caused her significant distress”.
She said failing to freeze her account when requested was a breach of HSBC’s contractual obligation. And she found many of the 157 phone calls Miss Lewis received were “abusive and threatening”.
HSBC also failed to register Miss Lewis’s monthly repayments of £300 to pay off her debt via a third party debt management firm.
The judge said: “It was clear that these (overdraft fees) had ended up causing a vicious circle, in which although Miss Lewis was trying to get on top of her overdraft, the bank charges that were being imposed undermined her efforts to repay what she owed.” – Daily Mail.