HSBC Credit Card

greavsie23

I have been paying back HSBC bank for the past 3years on my credit card. The amount is below the credit limit by about £250.
But they have been adding so much interest that the balance is going down by only £10 each Month.
This Bank is the most unhelpful bank i have dealt with & their Customer care dept totally useless.
Is there any way i can claim back the interest they have charged me over the past 3 years.
Any advise is welcome.
Thanks

yikes_2

I was in a similar position with an HSBC credit card about 9 months ago. My limit was looming at lightbulb moment and when I looked at how little the balance was going down because of the interest I freaked out. I didn't understand what my interest rate was and I was still buying little things online with it. I stopped buying stuff with it and sent them a message through the online banking thing- have you tried this? I wrote something like:

I hold my current account, savings account, and credit card with HSBC and am therefore a loyal customer. I would like to be sure I am getting the best interest rates available to me these accounts, please send details of the interest rates currently on my accounts. I have also been looking around at all the offers available to me from competitor companies. It appears there are various low interest new customer deals available on many credit cards, I would therefore like to know what you can offer me?
Thank you
my name

Now this of course was poo-pants-rubbish because I tried to apply for 0% interest/low interest cards and got scarily rubbish replies like 0% for 6months on £200 with 2% handling fee rising to 20.9% - not good at all. HSBC might have known this, they might not have BUT they replied about three days later offering a lower rate on my credit card, a higher rate on my savings account and didn't mention my current account. I replied saying- yes please apply these rates. They did. Buddabing. I'm still struggling but it's worth a try?

I did try to talk to them on the phone about my overdraft on current account but, even though I'd asked them not to, the woman kept trying to 'sell' me a personal loan... I hung up on her... can't stand sales people.

do an SOA and post it for more knowledgeable replies...

fatbelly

greavsie23 wrote:

Is there any way i can claim back the interest they have charged me over the past 3 years.

You have probably been paying penalty charges and these can be claimed back for the past six years. See www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk

and Martin's article

sparkle84

greavsie23 wrote:

I have been paying back HSBC bank for the past 3years on my credit card. The amount is below the credit limit by about £250.
But they have been adding so much interest that the balance is going down by only £10 each Month.
This Bank is the most unhelpful bank i have dealt with & their Customer care dept totally useless.
Is there any way i can claim back the interest they have charged me over the past 3 years.
Any advise is welcome.
Thanks

If you are under the credit limit and have made payments on time you won't have incurred any charges if you have you can claim these back, however you appear to asking can you claim back interest and they answer to that is no - you should however call them and ask about having the interest reduced, you make any head way in repaying the card you do need to pay more than the minimum payment.

CLAPTON

If you look at the HSBC website, they give examples for various credit cards...you don't say which one you have. For the example of a 14.9% APR card and paying only the minimum (3% ) each month, it shows that it will take 11 years and 3 months to clear a typical debt of 1000 .
So if you want to clear the debt you need to pay as much as possible and certainly more than the minimum each month.

Bloke_with_a_simple_life

Other thing to consider - do you still use the card for purchases or BTs? If you do, this won't help getting the balance down - stop using the card and increase the repayments. This will help lower the balance more quickly.