topic Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity in Credit Cards

HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:39:22 GMT

Hi all,

Have kind of a interesting situation that I am trying to understand the impacts of and deal with in the proper manner.

Background: my wife and I purchased a house in May of 2007. In the months building up that we had been focusing on paying down all the cards and building the credit for the mortgage. At the point we bought the house, we had all the cards paid down to maybe a couple hundred dollars each (4 cards total), except for one card, an HSBC Mastercard, that was pretty much zero. Once we got he house, we stayed very conscious of how much we were spending on the cards, and stopped using the HSBC card. It became my wife's "emergency" card and had a $1500 dollar limit. At that point we had the card just shy of 2 years (opened July 2005 along with a Best Buy account). Last activity on the card was May 2007.

In December we get a nice letter from HSBC telling us that they are closing the card. We log in to the website and the limit has been dropped to $5. Yes, 5 bucks. We call for an explanation and they day "due to lack of use" and that the cardholder agreement allows them to cancel at any time for any reason. Also, at this point there is no way that we can keep it open. We go ahead and request it closed at that point so that it will be reported as closed by us. Now when I check the credit reports it shows as closed, but that the limit was $5, and a high balance of $941.

We never had a late payment on the card. In fact we have never had a late payment on anything.

Will this hurt my credit report? How does a card with a $5 limit look? Any advice at this point? I'm bothered more by the fact that they dropped the limit than the fact that they closed the account.

Thanks,

- Ryan

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:50:37 GMT

Ryan, the same thing occurred to me. My average CL on other CCs is well over $10,000, but guess how much they gave me: $600!! It was converted from GM about 3-4 years ago, and HSBC just closed it in Jan. I don't think it is going to hurt your score even though it looks strange with $6 CL^^

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:56:29 GMT

I doubt it hurts score, but may raise some eyebrows on a manual review.

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:18:35 GMT

Hi Ryan and welcome to the forum!

Have you actually tried calling HSBC and ask them to reopen the account for you? If not, I would if I were you. And I'd ask to speak to a supervisor, instead of the first person that answers the phone. And ask them for the same cl and int. rates you had when they closed it.

And yes, it is becoming more and more common in today's economy for the CCC's to close a dormant account. Moral of that story is: use every card at least one or 2 times every 3 or 4 months. Then pay it off in full(pif). Put it away and bring it out in 3 or 4 months.

CCC's are getting mighty funky with the things they are doing, considering the mortgage meltdown, and record losses. One must be more diligent now than ever before when it comes to one's personal credit.

Hope that helps. Didn't say a whole lot. What can I say? I like to talk. lol

Congrats on getting your house.

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

MidnightVoice — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:25:16 GMT

Ender - one thing I do to keep all my cards alive is put a charitable donation or monthly bill (scorewatch for example) on them. Then I know exactly how much will be paid out when, ancdx the card is "used" every month

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:39:26 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi Ryan and welcome to the forum!

Have you actually tried calling HSBC and ask them to reopen the account for you? If not, I would if I were you. And I'd ask to speak to a supervisor, instead of the first person that answers the phone. And ask them for the same cl and int. rates you had when they closed it.

And yes, it is becoming more and more common in today's economy for the CCC's to close a dormant account. Moral of that story is: use every card at least one or 2 times every 3 or 4 months. Then pay it off in full(pif). Put it away and bring it out in 3 or 4 months.

CCC's are getting mighty funky with the things they are doing, considering the mortgage meltdown, and record losses. One must be more diligent now than ever before when it comes to one's personal credit.

Hope that helps. Didn't say a whole lot. What can I say? I like to talk. lol

Congrats on getting your house.

Hi,

Yes, first thing we tried to do was get them to keep it open, or reopen the account. Nope. No way. Getting to a supervisor has been difficult. Every person we have talked to has flat out refused to transfer us, and we have called 4 or 5 times. We even got a set of super checks" in the mail about 6 weeks after they closed the card, even then we could not get a supervisor. As long as this isn't going to reflect negatively on the CR, I'm inclined to just chalk it up to learning and let it go.

All the other cards get used regularly, so I'm not worried about them.

- Ryan

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

orl2185 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:04:33 GMT

EnderSun wrote:
Hi all,

Have kind of a interesting situation that I am trying to understand the impacts of and deal with in the proper manner.

Background: my wife and I purchased a house in May of 2007. In the months building up that we had been focusing on paying down all the cards and building the credit for the mortgage. At the point we bought the house, we had all the cards paid down to maybe a couple hundred dollars each (4 cards total), except for one card, an HSBC Mastercard, that was pretty much zero. Once we got he house, we stayed very conscious of how much we were spending on the cards, and stopped using the HSBC card. It became my wife's "emergency" card and had a $1500 dollar limit. At that point we had the card just shy of 2 years (opened July 2005 along with a Best Buy account). Last activity on the card was May 2007.

In December we get a nice letter from HSBC telling us that they are closing the card. We log in to the website and the limit has been dropped to $5. Yes, 5 bucks. We call for an explanation and they day "due to lack of use" and that the cardholder agreement allows them to cancel at any time for any reason. Also, at this point there is no way that we can keep it open. We go ahead and request it closed at that point so that it will be reported as closed by us. Now when I check the credit reports it shows as closed, but that the limit was $5, and a high balance of $941.

We never had a late payment on the card. In fact we have never had a late payment on anything.

Will this hurt my credit report? How does a card with a $5 limit look? Any advice at this point? I'm bothered more by the fact that they dropped the limit than the fact that they closed the account.

Thanks,

- Ryan

They say that with such arrogance. Me personally, they can shove their cards u no where.

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 21:26:16 GMT

there's back door numbers posted on this forum. Try one of those. you might get someone who actually knows something. A rarity from HSBC.

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

TangMeister — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 21:48:43 GMT

It sucks when this happens. Unfortunately, you can call, write, plead, but they won't budge on reopening the account...at least that's what I've seen so far on here and from my friend's experience. I've yet to see anyone successfully reopen with them.

They'll simply tell you to reapply for another card. My friend reapplied and was approved, but the credit limit was about 1/4 of his previous card's limit.

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

jmbfl — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:54:35 GMT

This is SOP for HSBC and is the major reason why they suck beyond all belief. Do a seach on the internet (not here) and you will see countless stories of cardholders who have been cancelled by HSBC due to nonuse. You're lucky you got a letter. Many have squirreled that card away for an emergency, gotten stuck on the side of the road and THEN found out they had been closed some time ago. Also, it is NOT 3 or 4 months! I would not recommend letting an HSBC issued card go unused for more that three months. That means be sure you use it in the third month!

Regarding recourse: it is consistently reported that there is no recourse from this action. So use it or lose it - and if you lose it you ain't gettin' it back. If you still want one of their cards you will have to reapply. Almost no one who has this happen to them can stand the thought of continuing doing business with HSBC and does not bother. Quite a way to run a company!

Message Edited by jmbfl on 09-15-2008 08:54 AM

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:26:14 GMT

I received my letter today and immediately called to have the account reopened, "LOU" flat out told me it wasn't possible to reopen the account and that he would be happy to transfer me to someone that can help me apply for a new card. I told him I wasn't happy with this account closure and he replied, "...the credit card companies own the cards and can do what they want..." I told him I would remember that comment and hung up. I regularly use 4 other cards, 2 w/BA and 2 w/AMX with zero balances. The HSBC card was kept as a "for emergency only", but I guess I'll use a different card.

FYI: As of 11/16/08 my score is over 800. I'll update this post if my score goes down due to this credit card account closure.

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:24:47 GMT

I will pay them back for you, I have 2 cards that are going to close out as soon as my payment posts, and they report a 0 balance. That'll show em.

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:54:11 GMT

Of course it will hurt your score. If you had a 7000 limit with no balance and now you suddenly lose that line of credit, your debt to available credit ratio goes up and your score goes DOWN. This happened to me. Then if you reapply, you have another inquiry which again can cause your score to go down..so being a good customer and not having a balance can SCREW you in the long run. They told me they were "concerned" that there might be fraud due to INACTIVITY ( complete nonsense)....

edited to remove reference to overseas call center

Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 11-28-2008 02:54 PM

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

haulingthescoreup — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:02:15 GMT

Hi, welcome to the forums, and sorry it was under these circumstances.

HSBC is ridiculously quick to shut down accounts for inactivity. You don't have to carry balances, or even let them post, but they do want to see usage at least once every couple of months, or out you go, no warning, no appeal.

I did take out your reference to overseas call centers. Before people start yelling about politically correct thinking, I would like to point out that in almost every case, US banks that don't care about customer service send much of their CS overseas, and they tie the hands of the foreign CSR's, not allowing them to actually help. One of our CS members once posted that the overseas CSR's are timed on their calls, and if they take too long, as in trying to help, they're written up. After a few instances of this, they're fired.

So please save your anger for the cheapskates at HSBC, or whichever bank you're dealing with, who set up their CS in this manner.

PLEASE READ: Posting About Foreign Call Center Frustrations

And I do wish you luck, but it's happened to an awful lot of people, I'm afraid.

Re: HSBC acct not closed but may be headed that way

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 02:50:56 GMT

HSBC reduced my credit limit from $4000 to $905. I contacted HSBC and they basically stonewalled me. My initial credit limit was $4000 and I used approx $2000. I made my payments on time and reduced my balance to $900. One day I got a notice from HSBC saying they were decreasing my credit limit to $905. I thought I did something wrong (missed a payment, sent a payment late, etc.) but I didn't.

The credit limit reduction I didnt care too much about because I wasnt making any charges on the account. I was more concerned about my utilization ratio that directly affects my credit score in that utilization accounts for 30 percent of your credit score. The lower it is, the better it is for your credit score.

When my limit was $4000, my utilization was 50 percent and dropping. When my limit was reduced to $905, my utilization maxed out to 99 percent. My balance is now $300 and waiting for my next statement...

Re: HSBC acct not closed but may be headed that way

My2cents — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 04:03:32 GMT

Hello everyone. I have been considering closing my 1st orchard card because I called in to get the "new 3% cashback gas card/2% cashback on all other purchases card" on their website using a softpull and the results said "congradulations", so I applied(resulting in a hardpull) and then they declinded me due to my 1st card not being 18 months old. So basically they hardpulled me for nonthing. That's not the end of it. My 1st card only missed the 18 month rule be 15 days and the first rep told me to just call back in 15 days and they would give me the card without a hardpull. So I did. The new rep said that the other rep did not have the power to tell me that, even though see saw where the 1st rep noted my declined acct that the customer will call back in 15 day to

get the card. Wait for a second........Cant they circumvent a rule if the time is only off by 2 weeks? Doesnt it takes about two weeks to get a card? All this for a 500 dollar card. All other cards 5k limit(2 cards) w no AF. But this card has a 39 AF. Fellow Forumers what should I do? Should I cut up my 1st orchard card with the 1k limit and 0 balance before the 59 AF is due? Oh I do have options OHHHHHhh the last straw...

Those (edited) had the nerves to say would you like to reapply? I politely said, "(edited)".

Enough said. My2cents

edit: as on your other post

Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 11-28-2008 08:03 PM

Re: HSBC acct not closed but may be headed that way

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:02:20 GMT

I'm resurrecting an old thread because HSBC is such a joke....use it or lose it...which I can understand but this bank's practices are lower than bottom gutter.

First I get a snail mail reviewing the changes due to upcoming changes in cc legislation. Nothing said about opt out.

Second I get slammed or spammed (take your pick) on all kinds of 0 % opportunities. No thanks.

Third I get a email regarding my account changing (one of those weird suspecting click this link emails) -- um, hello? No way am I clicking an embedded link and putting my personal info like that.

Fourth Go to Best Buy web site and try to logon that way to retrieve the "special notice" as indicated in the email. Um, no can do. Account is not accessible please call that godforsaken number.

Fifth Calling that godforsaken number. I am sorry but the customer service rep had no idea what I was talking about. Had to put me on hold finally gets back and says your account is closed. GOOD RIDDANCE. I do not need their card or CL for my ratio or to look good. The only reason I had the darn thing was to use one of their promotions that they pushed ..... its a lesson for me.... I never take these ... I pay cash, have no balances, have awesome credit and rating. Who needs this --- for all who have this card and need/want to keep it, use it or lose it.

(I feel better now.

Re: HSBC acct not closed but may be headed that way

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:06:39 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I'm resurrecting an old thread because HSBC is such a joke....use it or lose it...which I can understand but this bank's practices are lower than bottom gutter.
First I get a snail mail reviewing the changes due to upcoming changes in cc legislation. Nothing said about opt out.
Second I get slammed or spammed (take your pick) on all kinds of 0 % opportunities. No thanks.
Third I get a email regarding my account changing (one of those weird suspecting click this link emails) -- um, hello? No way am I clicking an embedded link and putting my personal info like that.
Fourth Go to Best Buy web site and try to logon that way to retrieve the "special notice" as indicated in the email. Um, no can do. Account is not accessible please call that godforsaken number.
Fifth Calling that godforsaken number. I am sorry but the customer service rep had no idea what I was talking about. Had to put me on hold finally gets back and says your account is closed. GOOD RIDDANCE. I do not need their card or CL for my ratio or to look good. The only reason I had the darn thing was to use one of their promotions that they pushed ..... its a lesson for me.... I never take these ... I pay cash, have no balances, have awesome credit and rating. Who needs this --- for all who have this card and need/want to keep it, use it or lose it.
(I feel better now.

Did you have RZMC card?

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

hyprble — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:05:23 GMT

I just wanted to chime in on HSBC venting. Here are my gripes:

- It takes 2-3 business days to make an online payment. Of all my cards (and I have some with BoA, CUs, Citi, Discover) this is the only one that has such a long turnaround for payment. Of course it's to get people that almost forgot to pay to pay the $15 "rush fee"

- Low credit limits - got a credit limit lowered from $600 to $350. Really?

- Closing accounts if you don't use them right away - although this situation is similar to other CCC's, I just wanted to point out I forgot to use the $250 limit card and it was closed right away. I'm just glad it was a low low limit, so my debt to credit wasn't negatively affected as much as it could've been.

I have 2 more HSBC cards - one is an "emergency card" that went from $1k to $650 that I use once every other month to keep open, and a 7.99% fixed balance transfer card with a balance that gets chased down for every $100 I pay. While I won't close these cards because I need them to keep my debt to credit ratio, I will no longer be giving this company my business once I no longer need them.

Shady.

Re: HSBC closed my account due to inactivity

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:25:45 GMT

I am in the process of trying to streamline my bills. As a result, I recently got rid of my HSBC card because it had the worst interest rate. I just received a letter from them saying that my card was closed due to inactivity. "But wait," I thought, "Didn't I dump you first?" I feel like I am breaking up with my 7th grade boyfriend, but I can't help but wonder why they are saying THEY closed the account instead of ME? Since the end result is the same, I don't know if it matters, but I just wanted to double check. Any thoughts? Should I call them? It's such a pain...