I'm really mad and frustrated right now. HSBC has changed the terms of how I process my mortgage payment and now its going to either cost me more time or more money to manage my mortgage payments. Can I adapt? Sure, but why should I have to?
Somewhere along the line HSBC decided that their Mortgage Services department was no longer inline with their long term (and short-sighted) vision and goals. In a massive "FU" to their customers they have decided to engage PHH Mortgage Corporation to provide their mortgage loan processing and sub-servicing; this change took effect on May 1st.
HSBC went through the trouble (as required by law) to send the bare minimum 15 days notice regarding this change. In this notice they decided to share some of the details associated with this transition such as:
- Your account number changes, start using the new number on May 1st.
- Your payment due date doesn't change.
- Direct your payments to PHH effective May 1st.
- If you use online bill pay be sure to update your account number and payment address to PHH.
- If you pay through Internet banking this will still be done through us.hsbc.com, however you will no longer be able to use the transfer function for payments.
- You can continue to make payments at HSBC branches, but a cash payment requires an HSBC account.
What they didn't say
Critical information about new fees associated with making payments was not included in the notice. I only have narrow view into the changes that most impact me, so if you are aware of other failures let me know. The changes that most affected me were:
- If you use Internet Banking for your payments (one time payment) there will now be a fee of $7.50 associated with this service. This fee is waived if you use paperless billing.
- If you use Internet Banking this service will be unavailable between May 1st and May 6th. We won't consider your payment "late"; however, we will charge you interest as normal resulting in additional fees.
Some Hope
I have to give the folks at PHH some credit for doing the best they could for me. The were able to process my payment manually as a one time option over the phone avoiding the $7.50 fee. While this doesn't make reparation for the strong-arming policy change, or the additional interest charges, it does show that there is still at least a minimum level of customer service left in this relationship.
So summing this up; HSBC now charges $7.50 for something that was free for the last 5 years of my mortgage and was "advertised" as a way that I could pay my account prior to signing. HSBC's changeover prevented me from making payments in the normal fashion and now I have additional interest cost in my mortgage because my payment is effective on the 7th instead of the 1st. The obvious solution is to refinance and move my account elsewhere but first I have to pull out this stick HSBC just poked in my eye.
