[z754103]

Originally Posted by greenietea

as for my personal experience, i'm referring to the credit card services. a month ago, i authorized a website to charge my credit card for something that was never delivered, i called hsbc to abort the transaction. they refused and told me that, they had no credit card fraud protection for their customers and that i would be charged. and when i asked them what they would do to prevent other frauds on my card, they said, "if u would like to get a new card, u would have to pay $100." needless to say, i was furious with their service.

Can anyone recommend a local credit card that *does* have good fraud protection and takes care of its customers when such events happen?

[KnowItAll]

z75 : I have a BEA and Citibank and they've both been top notch (no service charges or any fuss) on a couple of times my card has been cloned, while travelling.

Both the times they've called me proactively and replaced my card. And in one instance they spotted a number of charges in Japan which they faxed to me to get invalidated.

[z754103]

Thanks, I'll check them out. Any particular card among the ones those banks offer?

[grandcider]

I'm having an annoying experience with HSBC. A while back, I signed up for a free trial of an online storage service at Xdrive.com.

I emailed a request to have my account cancelled, but began being billed the next month. Apparently Xdrive was acquired by AOL. All means of contact disappeared from their website and at the same time, i'd forgotten my userid and password and couldn't login to the account panel. It doesn't even have a feature to retrieve passwords.

So I keep getting charges for this damn service and I've asked HSBC to stop further charges from this merchant. But they replied that they have no authority to do this, as it is a contract between me and the merchant. My only option, according to HSBC is to cancel the card and obtain a replacement. But this would be a huge inconvenience, as I have a number of autopay instructions set up on this account.

I've often asked credit card companies in the US to stop or dispute charges. I don't understand why HSBC gives this far fetched answer that they can't be of any assistance.

[PDLM]

Unless you have been negligent you ALWAYS have protection against fraud on any HK-issued credit card. The maximum liability allowed under the HKMA guidelines is HK$500 and very few card issuers would even impose that.

You will only be liable for fraudulent use if you have been negligent - which essentially means if you have left a note of the PIN with the card.

See section 30 of this document: http://www.info.gov.hk/hkma/eng/publ...01/cbp_eng.pdf
which is the Code of Banking Practice (it's not a statutory document, but all banks & card issuers in HK comply with it).

Note that the experience quote by the OP is NOT credit card fraud (meaning use of the credit card details without the owners authorisation) - it is simple fraud (taking payment for a good or service that is not delivered; the method of payment is incidental). If you had used an HSBC HK$100 bill to pay for something that had not been delivered would you ask HSBC to give you $100? No - of course not. The experience quoted by the OP is a dispute with a merchant, which is something else entirely.