I feel I am being taken for a major ride by HSBC Retail Services. In case you are interested, my case is related to the final payment of a Best Buy promotion that I initiated in October 2004.

From the onset of the account opening, all of my payments have been received on time and I have always paid more than the minimum amount due as I set it up for my final payment to be $1,000.

I mailed the final payment of $1,000 on April 10, 2006 (well in advance of the due date). Lo and behold, they say they never received it. This is a true mystery since it was mailed with eleven other bills that were all received and cashed. In addition, a large percentage of those bills were significantly more than $1,000.

Upon discovery of the non-receipt of my payment, I paid $1,000 by phone and asked them to waive the deferred finance charges, late fees, etc. that totaled $1,180.39.

Based on my previous payment history, it should have been more than clear to them that I would not miss one final payment to incur the $1,180.39 charge listed above.

Today, I received a rejection notice that they would not waive the charges. Seems too coincidental that there were no problems since October 2004, but now on the last payment, voila! Nice way to try and collect their deferred finance charges.