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Originally Posted by berlinsmommy I know that in this thread several of you have said that you can't/weren't able to negotiate with your credit card companies since they had the upper hand. I want to c&p a post made by LUV2SAVE in another thread: OP, did you catch Oprah's Debt Diet special? It has changed my life. Go to her website and they have a script you can follow to try to get your interest rates lowered.
I got 2 cards lowered from a 18.5 to a zero percent and one card from a 19.9 (oh I was sick about that one) to a 5.9%. Discover wouldn't budge. I even told the 2nd person that they are sending me countless offers of zero percent to open a new Discover card and transfer the balance but are charging my DH's ccard (I think it was around) 17.0%! so why can't they lower it now? The guy admitted they give better offers to "new" customers vs. the existing customers. I told him my DH (and I am an authorized user) has had this account for over 10 years so you aren't rewarding him for his loyalty, but instead penalizing him for staying with you guys?!!! So I got one of those balance transfer checks and goodbye Discover! I didn't close the account (because they said that can sometimes hurt your score) and those #%^!@'s are sending us balance transfer checks now for 5.9% for the life of the card or 0% for 6 months!
If you aren't planning a major purchase like a house or a car, do the balance transfer offer. And watch how all of the sudden MBNA will start finding low interest rates to give you now.
LUVS
I think I'm going to ask LUVS if she will write a post about how exactly she did this, but I just wanted to give everyone here a little encouragement (and possibly a nudge if you are currently paying high interest).
ETA: Here is a link to Oprah's site with her script for getting credit cards to lower your rates. |
Well, this is what I did. First of all, I went to Oprah's site and after reading post after post (I got inspired, got my courage up and) printed out the debt diet script
http://www2.oprah.com/money/debtdiet...eps_03_b.jhtml put it right by the phone and made some calls. I pretty much followed the script but I did say things like, "I've got these balance transfer offers from XYZ right here but I thought before I just transfer and close this account, I wanted to see what you guys could do for me. I've been a good, on time paying customer for -- years as you can see."
And I want to also say that I really did had, in my hand, those checks that the other ccard companies want you to use for balance transfers or whatever. They had various interest rates from 0% for 6 months to 5.9 for the life of your transfer. And these were ccards that we had paid off in full, had the available credit to just do the transfer. So I figured I really had nothing to lose (but paying all that high interest!) but having those did give me courage to try to make those calls.
I called Citibank first.
The first person said no. I asked for a Supervisor. They said they could check my account, put me on hold for forever. The same person came back with "great news! we can lower your rate to 10.99 (I think)" from 19.9, it is a good deal but I asked if I could still speak to a Supervisor because I had an offer for 5.9 from XYZ company that I wanted to transfer to, and close this today if I don't get this rate. I told her I understand she can't get me a lower rate so I'd like to speak to someone who could. I was on hold FOREVER. Finally a (Supervisor?)man came on and I had to go through the whole spiel again. I told him that he can check our account, we've been a good customer for over 10 years but I cannot help but take the offer the other company has, of course he can understand that right? Put me on hold again. Finally came back and said they can put my interest rate at 5.9%. Success! It felt SO GOOD!
Called Discover. Man was that a bummer. Did the whole spiel but they told me they cannot do a rate change over the phone, they could send me a request form and I'd have to fill it out and send it back for their consideration. I asked for a Supervisor. On hold forever. Told the Supervisor everything. He didn't even care. (**see above for our conversation.) I got off the phone really upset.
Calmed down and called USAA. They were AMAZINGLY GREAT! They transfered me to another department and this lady went through our accounts, made the interest 0% for 12 months. Now I think this was like a whole new ccard because we had to close those cards and get new Platnium ones. And the Platnium ones have all of these great benefits and rewards to them. No fee to do all of this either. Now if we make any purchases I think the rate is like a 8.9% but we are going to try not to until these are paid off, and we can with 0% pay them off in a year.
So I hope this helps someone, I really do! It is really hard to make those calls but I decided that no matter what, I wasn't going to let the no's get me down. I told myself after years and years of paying on time tons of money in interest, I need to atleast try.
LUVS
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