Best Buy HSBC INCREASING MINIMUM PAYMENTS EACH MONTH AND THEN CHARGING SERVICE FEES EQUAL TO NEW MINIMUM PAYMENT Baltimore, Maryland

Best Buy HSBC Retail Services is the financial company that services the "no interest with x amount of months to pay" deals that you find at your Best Buy store to finance larger purchases.  I signed up for this when I bought a television and DVD player last May. The deal was no interest with 36 months to pay. After making a few payments I decided to set up automatic payments through my bank. I divided up the remaining amount owed by the months remaining in my contract and made the monthly payments as that amount. They were $24 per month. This worked fine until February when they upped the payment amount to $25.  I changed the amount to $25 per month but it was too late for that month. After making a payment of $24 on Feb. 24 I was charged a late fee of $25 on Feb. 27 for not making the full payment. The next month the minimum payment went up to $31.98 and when they did not receive that full amount by the due date I was charged a late fee of $31.98. Unfortunately I am living overseas so I don't receive my bills until after they are due so I didn't catch this right away. I just called and after much discussion they did take off the fees but not the interest that had accrued because of them.  When I saw that the minimum payment was set to go up to $45 dollars for next month I decided to pay off the whole amount at this time rather than deal with escalating minimum payments each month. HSBC claims that they were forced to do this because of the new credit card laws.  I wanted to make others aware that this is happening.