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I have been an account holder with Direct Merchants (HSBC) since 2004. I have always paid my monies owed on time. On the fifteenth of February this year, I went online to quickly make a payment before departing on a trip to Arkansas. The payment was not due until the eighteenth.

Yesterday, upon return home, I went online to check to make sure all of my hurriedly paid payments had posted correctly.

All payments had posted correctly.

But, to my amazement, shock and anger, the DM/HSBC account summary stated that I was over my credit limit by $27! I thought, "How can this be?! I have a $3200 credit limit and shouldn't have a balance over about $1100!" Then when I read further I saw that my credit limit had been reduced to $1110! I pay ontime! Actually, my account sat from July 2008 to December 2008 with a zero balance.

I called DM/HSBC and was told there had been an across the board credit limit reduction in order to cut their losses. Cut their losses?! Sounds like someone gearing up for a government bailout to me! I told the representative that I could understand their reducing credit limits on slow payers or minimum requirement payers; or even omitting credit limits on crack and meth heads, but to reduce my credit limit of $3200 that I worked hard to pay and EARN to a mere $1110!

I use my credit card to place orders with my suppliers for my business' supplies. I place large orders often. But the amounts are always paid...usually by the end of the month!

I am expecting a charge for an order totalling right around $900 to post to DM/HSBC today. So now I must call my supplier and explain to them to not submit the charge to this credit card. How embarrassing!

I could come much closer to understanding if a letter of warning had been mailed to me that there was to be a credit limit reduction on a certain date, so thereby I would not place orders to the card. (Oh, yes...the representative stated that they were not required by federal law to inform customers of reductions ahead of time by mail! LOL! They told me each time through the years when they were increasing it though.) But the manner in which DM/HSBC conducted this new policy is down right unfair and has no consideration for their loyal and paying customers.

This is bad business ethics.

I will pay off DM/HSBC and close my account.

I DO NOT recommend this company to anyone who wishes to conduct business with a company with business ethics and who appreciates their customers loyalty.

Good riddance to these scam artists.

Oh, yes...Uncle Sam be ready for HSBC to jump on your freebie band wagon to ask for a government bailout. Why are these people being bailed out? We, the American citizen who works our ### off, never get a bailout. If my business were failing, the government would laugh at me if I requested help.