HSBC sued over credit card 'cartel'

HSBC sued over credit card 'cartel'
By Jason Nisse
Published: 04 September 2005

HSBC has been accused of being part of a cartel which has forced up fees and restricted consumers' rights in the US credit card market.

Two lawsuits, filed in New York and Pennsylvania, have claimed that eight banks plus American Express came together to agree a fee structure for Americans using their credit cards abroad - and terms and conditions that restrict customers' rights.

The eight banks - Bank of America, Capital One, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, HBSC, MBNA and Providian - are said to have agreed with American Express on minimum fees for currency conversion into US dollars for Americans abroad.

They are also said to have harmonised the terms and conditions on their credit cards to include a clause that forces any customer with a dispute to go to arbitration, so giving away their rights to sue the credit card issuer.

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article310082.ece

Recent trip abroad I checked - credit union CC had a 1% conversion rate, American Express - 2% conversion rate, MBNA :puke: 3% conversion rate.

How would I have known had I not called and asked beforehand? I would not have know until I got the HUGE bill.

It is time that we the people dump the mother fucking greed mongers! Time to act! Close out these accts. with above named companies and END THEIR DAMN "CARTEL".

:kick:

Paying off the Texaco and Lowe's cards. The Lowe's card only has interest free balance on it until next year by which time it will be paid off. We even gave up our debit cards due to the lack of security and the several breaches this past year. Not going to play the game anymore. We go cash or check or not at all. So far not having any problems doing it either once we made sure to have cash on hand for weekends. Pretty easy conversion.

I paid off debt I ran up when I was married (don't ask) and I haven't used a cc since then. Too many fees, to high an interest rate to pay for the service that you get. It's not better than organized loansharking.

I do have a debit card attached to my brokerage account and I use that whenever CCs are needed.

I do still have a regular checking account, but only because I have utilities automatically drafted from it every month. I'm about to cancel it because it's too expensive. It used to be an interest-bearing checking account. Ha.

I'm permanently off the CC hamster wheel.

I have seven of them with an $11k combined balance. With minimums going up, interest rates going up, and my overall opinion of the credit card industry going down, I've decided to get rid of them. Heck, I'm paying several hundred dollars a month in INTEREST alone!

I opened a new Chase Visa card with 0% interest for 18 months, transferred my balances to that one card, and ran the rest through the shredder. I'm going to take on a few extra sections next semester, so I should have the card completely paid off by the time the introductory rate runs out. At that point, it goes through the shredder too!

Of course, I still have two car loans, a college loan, a personal loan, and two mortgages to deal with, but I'll be a little bit out of debt at that point :)

but what will you do when you need to buy a plane ticket, rent a car, etc?

Many times you MUST have a credit card, even if you are paying with cash, as in the case of a rental car, as a form of collateral in case you steal the car...

?

and, if you're worried about fraud, only for things that absolutely insist on a credit card. That will keep the chances of someone stealing your details to a minimum (and increase the chances of them getting caught).

but you can pay a travel agent with cash or check for plane tickets. Maybe they can do your hotel and rental car arrangements, too?? I dunno coz never ran into that situation yet but it's worth looking into.

I have no problem getting hotel rooms or renting cars. My debit card looks like a platinum-level CC.

When your current debit card is replaced, its likely that your card will have "DEBIT" printed on the front. Most banks are doing this now.

will still take it.

But I have substantial savings that I have built up over the years...by not using credit cards and living well beneath my means.

We were getting really nervous about the credit card processing companies (who also process the debit card transactions, IIRC) getting hacked and handing out the info to people they weren't supposed to be giving it to. No one would have even known that was happening if CA didn't have a law requiring them to notify card holders so they ended up having to notify all of us. I used my debit card at a shoe store chain that got hacked into and our credit union contacted us about it.

you might have missed on the "Customer Inspection Sheet", or that is done in a hurricane or street gang Hijacking, if you didn't get their insurance...!!

IIRC, more than half of Americans using credit cards pay off the debt in full each month (which was surprising).

But among those who don't, their average balance was something like 20,000 dolloars (which was shocking).

Apparently there are many people who don't pay off balances in full even though they have the cash to do so because they beleive that they're better off having cash for a rainy day than they are going down to a zero savings account balance.

These people are CRAZY. They have no conception of how much their paying in service charges and interest and they don't realize that it's the CREDIT CARD that should be their protection on a rainy day, and not their savings account earning 1% interest, while they pay 10-25% a year on their credit card balances.

I'm a DU'er and I work for HSBC. I wouldn't know a "cartel" from my elbow, but I can tell you a lot of good folks work there. On Friday night, we partnered with the Red Cross to answer their calls during the NBC Concert for Katrina in our call centers.

We had about 1,000 volunteers nationally to take these calls. While the concert was only on for 1 hour, we all volunteered over 4 hours taking calls (to allow for the Pacific airing). Most people worked their regular work shifts then volunteered the 4 hours (some people were on site 4am - 9pm).

We learned about the concert on Wednesday, and by Friday, we had call routing capabilities in place, volunteers in place, Red Cross software in place, etc. - a lot of people worked long hours to get set up for this. Some of those people were even (holding my nose) Republican.

I'm not an apologist for credit card rates in general, but I just wanted to share that HSBC has a lot of good folks.

working for many companies with questionable ethics. Lot of good folks worked for Enron and Arthur Anderson. No one is questioning the ethics of the employees, just those at the top that make the operating decisions.

Thanx to all of you for doing your part to help out in this disaster. :hi:

is not as bent, corrupt and totally criminal as it's UK chairman Sir John Bond, whose career over the last 30 years I have followed in depth and with great interest ever since he was a mere branch manager of Midland Bank (subsequently bought by HSBC) in the UK. And where he acted as portfolio manager to a Polish order of priests called the Marian Fathers, who stole some £250 million worth of UK real estate, equities and bond-based assets which they then laundered via Banco Ambrosiano (under the aegist of God's Banker Roberto Calvi) into the Vatican Bank between 1979 and 1982.

I have posted elsewhere about this crook Bond and his nefarious dealings with UK organised crime cartels formerly under the control of ex-Daily Mirror boss Robert Maxwell whose criminal record was so successfully whitewashed over by Margaret Thatcher and later John Major. And his coterie of bent politicians whose careers he smoothed while amassing the coffers of HSBC worldwide.

Also about Bond's corporate frauds committed with both during his CEO tenure of Midland Bank and later at HSBC with former fellow lowlife banker Edmond Safra (Republic National Bank) who died in the 1999 mysterious Monaco fire that has seen his nurse Ted Maher jailed on manslaughter charges. (That conviction is now being appealed in Monaco and Maher has gone public recetly threatening to spill the beans about Safra and his secret dealings with Bond).

Likewise the massive UK corporate frauds Bond created with ex Bank of England supervisory committee director Brian Quinn - who is shortly appearing in the dock in the BCCI class action in London (where some 20,000 former creditors of BCCI are suing the B of E for malfeasance - ie gross negligence) accused of deliberately turning a blind eye to the Asian organised crime cartels that received a UK banking licence in the late 1970s from the BoE - after his personal assurances about their probity.

In 1986 Bond and Midland bank were sued in the UK for the return of the stolen £250 million asset portfolio which ended up as being used as collateral to raise loans by Cardinal Marcinkus in 1982 - and resulted in the bankruptcy of both Ambrosiano and the Vatican Bank.

Bond and the Midland lost the lawsuit.

A subsequent, 1996-7 UK lawsuit saw Bond and HSBC (as Midland parent co) losing a staggering £50billion lawsuit that, although it made it to the UK's Chancery Divison of the Royal Courts of Justice was hastily settled out of court after police files regarding Bond's extentive involvement with Russian organised crime in the UK was due to be presented in the litigants' opening salvos in a public hearing.

Anybody wondering why Poodle's off to China right now?

Unfinished business from that 1996-7 lawsuit threatens the entire political careers of his front benches relating to the trail of espionage that Robert Maxwell was involved in. The Thomas/Dillon book that goes into extensive details about Maxwell's criminal ast is reviewed here: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12419168&method=full&siteid=50143.

And Congress is letting them get away with usury fees and interest and collusion.