BestBuy.Com

[AstridHagen]

I am one of many who are seriously disappointed in Best Buy's continued use of HSBC as their credit card financing institution.  I have a 12 month "same as cash" financing with Best Buy through HSBC.  This month I noticed that my check payment to HSBC had not been deposited.  That check went out in the mail with 3 others that were all received and processed in a timely fashion.  I see that there is repeated customer problems involving statements received late and payments being processed late.  I was concerned that the non-receipt of payment would then nullify my "same as cash" purchase.  I was assured it would not but that I would be assessed a late payment of $39.  Ouch!  I signed up for online bill pay but was surprised by all the conditions there as well - conditions that the customer service rep told me it was mandatory for her to relay to me.  However, she inaccurately relayed those conditions saying that if I paid my bill after 4p it would not be processed until the next day - when in actuality it takes TWO business days according to the online bill pay site.  It does indeed seem that HSBC does all in their power to make paying on time as difficult as possible.  I also believe that with the multitude of complaints, that they must also employ some shady tactics to make it impossible - like holding payments and mailing out statements late.  In light of all this newly garnered information, I would like to pay off my purchase early but am now concerned that they will then penalize me with additional charges.  I'm looking for some reassurance that I can pay off this debt safely as soon as possible.  Sadly, going forward, I will not be utilizing any of Best Buy's purchase incentives that require the use of HSBC financing.  I will also work diligently at warning as many away as I'm able for the incentives are not worth the hassle and horrible customer service from HSBC.

[Dorothy-BBY Community Supervisor]

Hello AstridHagen -

Allan from our Community Connector team will be reviewing and responding to your concern.  You should hear from him in the next few business days.

Thanks!

[Allan-BBY Community Connector]

Hi AstridHagen,

It is always concerning when a customer feels like the financial institution (HSBC), we use to provide credit to our customers, is engaging in practices that make it difficult for the customer to make their payments on time. I can assure you that we are constantly reviewing our relationship with HSBC and take every complaint from our customers into consideration before deciding whether or not to continue the relationship, and this would include your complaint. I have to thank you for informing us of your experience with HSBC. Without input like this from our customers it would be much harder to make changes to our business that will positively affect our future business.

The bill for a Best Buy® credit card (funded by HSBC) can be paid online, and any payment submitted after 4pm Pacific Time should post to the account the next business day. Keep in mind that any payment made in this fashion on a Friday after 4pm Pacific Time wouldn’t post until the following Monday.

If you decide to pay off your credit card in full there would be no fees or penalties associated with that payment. If you need any further clarification or any help in any way just send me a private message, and I promise to do my best to assist you. To send me a private message you should log into the forum, click on my icon, and then click on the send this user a private message link.

Thanks for posting,

[techyscur]

I am completely on board with you AstridHagen.  These crooks are after every penny you have in your pocket.  Notice also, they may have some of your payment due dates fall on a Sunday.  On a day they don't even count it as a day they process any payments yet they call that a due date, very contradictive practice.  This just happened to me this past payment.  My due date was Sunday Aug 2nd.  I made a rush payment on July 30 for it to post on Friday July 31st. I paid the additional $15 for this so called "expedited service".  Recieved two confirmations, one on the day i submitted my payment letting me know that my rush payment has been recieved and the 2nd the following day confirming that my payment had been recieved.  However, it wasn't until August 6th that i get a third email accusing me that I was past due.  When I logged in to check my account I saw that that i had incurred an additional charge of $25 for a bounced check!  How coud this be!  According to the agent on the phone, it showed that I mistyped my checking account number and that i'm also going to incur a $39 late fee!  As you can imagine I was outraged!  Especially since I know myself very well, and i know I didn't mistype my number because i double checked as I always do with everything.  The system is in my view a bit rigged because it being the same system for the regular payment option, i had to re-enter all my banking information again.  And even if I did mistype, why not overlook these charges for a customer who for the past year has never made a late payment?  Has always been on time, showing that I am an honest, good paying customer!  Not a chance!  I once thought these late payment fees and what not were for those deliquent, dishonest, untrustworthy hoodlums.  But it seems they are so short sighted.  Because now i know what i have to do and that is just pay my bill in full and not deal with these ill, menace to society thieves.  They are worse than the mafia. 

Even though i pleaded for them to take a second look at my past history they did not budge on any of these charges.  It's like this one single honest mistake I was going to have to pay through the roof!  Unbelivable!  All they could do is apologize and tell me that they could not do anything about the charges even though they show that I have always made my payments on time.

All i was trying to do was do good on my part and pay my bill on time and all i'm asking is for them to ease back on these ridiculous, blood sucking charges.

I am saddened because I like the people at BestBuy.  Always so helpful and caring, but i'm afraid however also that I won't be utilizing any of BestBuy's purchase incentives that require the use of HSBC financing.  And AstridHagen, I to will work dilegently at warning others.  And to Dorthy and Allan, I hope you can put this on your records to help BestBuy demand HSBC build better relationship with your customers.

Regards.

[AstridHagen]

And now I have coincidentally received a scam email addressed from an HSBC representative.  I forwarded the email to HSBC asking for information.  This was their reply:

Dear Valued Best Buy Customer,

Thank you for your email inquiry dated 08/07/2009. 

We would like to inform you that, this email was not sent by HSBC Retail
Services.

In order to process this request, we require further information from you.  We
would appreciate you taking a few moments to call us at 1-800-365-0292.

You are important to us and we appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

HSBC Retail Services

So, I called.  Only to be told over the phone that the email was not sent by HSBC Retail Services.  I said that the email had told me the same thing but requested that I call to provide further information.  They had no idea what I was talking about.  They said that they required no further information and that there was nothing more they could do other than inform me that the original email was not sent by HSBC.  This company is ridiculously run!

Astrid {removed per forum guidelines}

[nareyan]

What they say is true.

With HSBC if, say, your bill is due on a Friday then you must have paid the bill no later than the Wednesday prior by Pm for it to be on time, otherwise the customer must pay a $15 "Rush Payment" fee to avoid a late payment. The fee applies even to online ACH payments, which is absurd and a questionable tactic clearly used to exploit customer. Since when should a customer be penalised for paying their bill on time?

Not only that, but should you have a problem with your account due to this policy, as I did, then best wishes trying to have an HSBC rep solve your problem. You will reach some person in India who will apologise to no end about how they are powerless to help the situation. They will send your head spinning and frustrate you into giving up, which is probably what they're paid to do anyway.

I have had a horrible experience as a cardholder, and I will never again make a purchase at Best Buy so long as they are associated with the HSBC consumer credit card program due to Best Buy's decision to send customers to such a horrible bank

Do you hear me Best Buy? I love your store, but you are making a mistake in doing business with a creditor as deceptive as HSBC. Their practices reflect directly upon your corporation. So long as you are recommending your loyal customers to this corrupt bank, so long as you are allowing this bank to profit by deception at the expense of your hard-earned clientele, then it might as well be your corporation committing such acts.

Just the other day I purchased a 52" Sony Bravia LCD television and a new Sony Blue Ray player from a competitor to Best Buy for the very reason stated above. You can thank HSBC for that lost business, Best Buy, and for the lifetime of business you will lose from me and anyone I will affect to this issue of accountability in associating with a corporation like HSBC.

That is the extent of my ability to retaliate, but I will do so persistently and I bet I am not the only one who feels this way. Surely Best Buy are not taking this negative portion of the equation into account when calculating what HSBC brings to the table.

Sincerely,

-William

[saraujb]

Hello,

In searching for the logon for the online account management for the Best Buy credit card I came across this forum in my Google results and felt compelled to document my experiences as noted in this thread.

I, like the other posters, have spent thousands of dollars on electronics via the Best Buy card.  I have also had to experience the suicide-inducing event that is talking to their customer service.  Never once have I called over to their customer service in India and hung-up feeling like I had accomplished anything, except increasing my desire to fly over to India and face the "customer service" representative who is supposed to be "helping me" face-to-face.

My first experience of many was involving the obscene $39 late-fee I was charged after failing to pay my payment before the due date, which also happened to be a Sunday.  I also see that someone else posted noting this exact same problem, what a crock.  I had sent the payment Friday morning from my Chase account, and of course it wasn't processed because every bank everywhere does not process electronic transactions on the weekend.  Knowing this, how is it possible that a due date can fall on a Sunday?  My other legitimate card from Wells Fargo automatically updates the due date, should it fall on a weekend.  I was subsequently charged the late fee and after spending 30 minutes arguing with "John" was forced to pay the late fee after he read his script telling me there is nothing he can do.  This was without a doubt the most frustrating customer service experience I have ever encountered.

After this I made sure to schedule the payment every month after receiving an email notifying me that my statement was available.  I assumed this would prevent me from having to encounter any further issues, but alas, I couldn't have been more wrong.  The next problem began one month when I did not receive the email notifying me that my statement was available.  Since I did not get it, I didn't know when the due date was and did not think of it until 1 day before it was due.  I had to pay the next ridiculous fee, a $15 "rush payment fee".  I found it very odd that I did not receive the email, I use Gmail as my primary email client and all of my email goes to my Blackberry, so it would be very difficult for me to miss an email.  Ultimately, I wrote it off assuming that I somehow missed the email, even though I had received them every month prior.

For the next couple of months I received the emails as I had before, then I found myself in the same situation again.  I did a thorough search of my inbox and blackberry and could not find the email anywhere.  I called and of course there was nothing I could do except pay the "rush payment fee".  I also instructed the rep to document my compliant and this was the second time this had happened, apparently expecting regular emails from them is about as wise as expecting to have a good customer service experience when calling.

I now have an automatic payment set up in my account; I don't think I can handle having to call them again for any reason. 

I will say this I have been avoiding Best Buy as a result, and if I EVER see HSBC on anything in my financial future, I will treat the documents as though they are contaminated with swine flu.  That is watching them burn and submersing the ashes in Hydrochloric acid.

I only wish more people would complain and force Best Buy to do something about it.  I will always pay more for good customer service, which is why all of my future electronic purchases will be made from other electronic retailers, as far away as I can get from Best Buy and HSBC.  As the poster above me noted, its not Best Buy's fault that HSBC sucks, but so long as they continue to associate themselves with HSBC I will take my business elsewhere and encourage everyone I know to follow suit.

Sincerely,

Jeff

[techyscur]

Update:  Don't be fooled.  

The $15 expedited service to pay your bill is NO GUARANTEE!  Come to find out, it only serves as a note on thier system to let them know that you are attempting to make a payment on time but they actually don't process it until the next business day anyway, after your due date if it falls on a Sunday.  You may get 2 email notices before stating that payment has been confirmed and recived but actually hasn't.  These notices get sent even before the system truly processes it.  So that means on Monday night processing, after they get the money from your bank, they'll go in the day after and cancel that $39 late fee from the system as it is still incurred regardless automatically.  As I mentioned before, no financial system I've ever known processes payments on Sunday.  That day is used to perform complete backups.  So folks, even if you pay the extra $15, your still vulnerable to the pitfall of all these fees, it's really the only way they can profit more.  They have truly crunched thier numbers to figure out that Interest fees are no longer as profitable for them.  GOOD LUCK!

[JJW0782]

These complaints are coming from people that pay their bills at the last minute go figure. I pay my statement the second it comes out never a problem. I pay it online also. Pay your bills online its not Best Buy's fault you all wait to the last minute.

[Dorothy-BBY Community Supervisor]

Hello nareyan and saraujb -

Please understand that while we can pass along your input, we have no control over HSBC customer interactions or policies.  Thank you both for sharing your concerns over HSBC with us here at Best Buy®. 

Regards,