topic Re: HSBC MasterCard in Credit Cards

HSBC bank mastercard

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:17:03 GMT

A little tale of a bank that really does not appreciate its customers :

I have had a hsbc mastercard for 10 years and have never ever missed a payment in all those years , my balance has been from the low hundreds to 8 thousand or so and my limit was 10,000.00 . the interest was never good on this card at 13.9 percent but when i got it i was recovering from a bankruptcy .

Recently my interest rate went from 13.9 to 17.9 then to 19.9 for no reason other than a whim of the bank , no amount of phone calls could sway them so i paid off the card totally . as soon as the balance went to zero the credit limit went to 300.00 ( yes 3 hundred ) . one more phone call and they can lower my interest rate back to 13.9 and they say my limit will increase over the years . DO THEY NOT KNOW THAT MY CL DECREASE ADVERSELY AFFECTS MY FICO SCORE ? sure they do , they are not stupid .

so , i cancelled the card and now they get 19.9 percent of nothing which in my calculation is NOTHING . i dont really think my cancelling the card will affect my fico any more than this company has already .

on another note , my discover card just gave me a CLI and BOA just gave me an attractive interest rate .

signed

an angry consumer in georgia

Re: HSBC bank mastercard

Red1Blue — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:24:50 GMT

I am debating if I should close my HSBC MasterCard as I have to pay AF on the card next month when it comes to renewal. It is $39/ year. I just dont feel like paying it any more.

Re: HSBC bank mastercard

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:23:30 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
A little tale of a bank that really does not appreciate its customers :
I have had a hsbc mastercard for 10 years and have never ever missed a payment in all those years , my balance has been from the low hundreds to 8 thousand or so and my limit was 10,000.00 . the interest was never good on this card at 13.9 percent but when i got it i was recovering from a bankruptcy .
Recently my interest rate went from 13.9 to 17.9 then to 19.9 for no reason other than a whim of the bank , no amount of phone calls could sway them so i paid off the card totally . as soon as the balance went to zero the credit limit went to 300.00 ( yes 3 hundred ) . one more phone call and they can lower my interest rate back to 13.9 and they say my limit will increase over the years . DO THEY NOT KNOW THAT MY CL DECREASE ADVERSELY AFFECTS MY FICO SCORE ? sure they do , they are not stupid .
so , i cancelled the card and now they get 19.9 percent of nothing which in my calculation is NOTHING . i dont really think my cancelling the card will affect my fico any more than this company has already .
on another note , my discover card just gave me a CLI and BOA just gave me an attractive interest rate .

signed
an angry consumer in georgia

I want to say welcome to the club but I don't want you to think that it makes this experience suck any less. Fact is that recently ALOT of us have been dealing with various acts of idiocity by HSBC in one form or another and they are just hell bent on alienating their entire customer base. There is no rhyme or reason we have figured out yet and if you can bear to use another card and just sock drawer this one, do it. I have already started reshifting my assets and reallocating to more stable banks/cards as have many others. It is very unfortunate as they gave me a CLI on one account but turned around and slashed me 50% on another, makes no sense. They lowered my APR on one and jacked up on another, makes no sense. I am very sorry to hear that you are having troubles too but it seems to be a habit and becoming and expectation with regards to HSBC. Try not to let it get to you, although much easier said than done, I know, trust me.

PS: Are those lovely Georgia peaches in season yet?

Message Edited by Guardian on 02-25-2009 04:23 PM

Re: HSBC bank mastercard

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:25:46 GMT

@Red1Blue wrote:
I am debating if I should close my HSBC MasterCard as I have to pay AF on the card next month when it comes to renewal. It is $39/ year. I just dont feel like paying it any more.

IMHO dump them, take the hit on the age of account and the credit and take your business elsewhere where you are appreciated. I did that myself with Orchard, eventhough it cost me almost 2.5 years of history about 6 years ago and I am already way over it and glad I dumped them when I did.

HSBC MasterCard

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:51:31 GMT

I just blasted their customer service agent last Saturday because my card was declined for a $11 charge when just an hour or so prior I charged $200+ with no problem and had been charging different amount all days.

Prior to the declination, I received a phone call allegedly from HSBC as a security alert of purchase for $8 or $9 for 2-3 days prior. The caller said the charge was suspicious but couldn't identify what was suspicious about it. I asked if my credit card usage history indicated prior transaction with that company and the answer given was incorrect, so I hung up.

So when I called customer service I was furious. Not because of this one incident, but this was the third alert in about a month and I viewed it as a scare tactic to get me to buy the fraud alert product they were trying to sell me that I refused to buy.

Re: HSBC MasterCard

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:01:29 GMT

So HSBC is not a good credit card to get? I was approved for a credit card through them for a $300 limit at 8.9%.(or so they said) I don't have very good scores about in the 620-630 area and I need a CC. Was declined for Hooters.

Re: HSBC MasterCard

Creditaddict — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:06:18 GMT

they are a great bank to rebuild.

I just would not call them a good prime bank for people with good scores.

Re: HSBC MasterCard

Red1Blue — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:18:16 GMT

@Creditaddict wrote:
they are a great bank to rebuild.
I just would not call them a good prime bank for people with good scores.

Re: HSBC MasterCard

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:49:33 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
So HSBC is not a good credit card to get? I was approved for a credit card through them for a $300 limit at 8.9%.(or so they said) I don't have very good scores about in the 620-630 area and I need a CC. Was declined for Hooters.

Generally no, if you can avoid them, do it, or go for their non-subprime better cards.

Re: HSBC MasterCard

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:50:28 GMT

@Creditaddict wrote:
they are a great bank to rebuild.
I just would not call them a good prime bank for people with good scores.

Bingo, said much better. I tried but wasn't as eloquent about it. Ditto though.

Re: HSBC MasterCard

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:06:26 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
So HSBC is not a good credit card to get? I was approved for a credit card through them for a $300 limit at 8.9%.(or so they said) I don't have very good scores about in the 620-630 area and I need a CC. Was declined for Hooters.

I'm not saying that are not a good company. Right now, I have good terms with them. 6.9% fixed with high enough credit limit to handle emergencies. I also get reward points that I've used for cash back. The reward checks come within about 2 weeks from the request date.

What I don't like is they denied a $11.00 transaction when I had been charging all day and one transaction was over $200. There was nothing suspicious about the transaction of about $8 they were investigating from a few days prior. There is a detailed story about the sequence of events, but the short version is that they have been these so-called security alerts and then use it as a scare tactic to buy the monitoring service. I really dislike that.

I've only had one transaction that you would call suspicious because the merchant was foreign.