SR in Maryland said: “Watch your bills closely from HSBC Direct Merchants Bank, Nevada. I noticed on my current bill that they had recorded my payment for the month as _0.00. I had sent them a payment, as I always do the same time each month, on the 5th. Then, I pulled my previous bill up on the computer and saw where they had taken my current payment and combined it with the previous payment to credit October’s billing period with a double payment. When I called them on it, during the recorded report, part of the message stated that my last payment had been denied. (HUH?). So, basically, what they had done, is deny my payment on the 5th to apply it to the closing of the last billing period (the 3rd), so they could charge me with a late fee of $34.00.

The guy on the phone said since they had received it on the previous billing cycle closing date they had applied it to the last billing cycle. I was furious, of course, then realized, my payments weren’t set up for automatic payment till the 5th of every month. I decided to call them back, listened to the recording again, and they had changed it from the previous recording that stated nothing about “denying payment”, and included a survey option, then would go straight to personnel. If you use automatic payments, keep an eye on how they are applying your payment to charge fees and make more money off of you.

At any rate, keep an eye on your bills and statement periods, their billing cycle dates change often due to some kind of 26 day cycling. I told the guy, from now on, I wanted my statement due date to fall around the 10th of every month. Of course, this may take a few months—go figure. Sure didn’t take them long to fraudulently apply my payment!

Also, you may have received a notice that their rates have skyrocketed from 13.9% to a whopping 19.9%. I’ve heard that a lot of companies are upping their rates, some to as high as 25%.

Would be nice to know if anyone else has experienced this type of manipulation. I would think that they tend to do this type of payment scam with people who use automatic bank payments in the hopes that they’re not really watching,m and HSBC can get away with it.

The only way I see to resolve this is for everyone to just keep an eye open on their accounts and how their payments are being applied to their accounts, and if their is enough of this, perhaps a class action suit can be filed.”