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The Daily Poverty Post.

telephone

First of all, isn’t it funny that when conjuring the telephone, we think of the above? That proves there’s nothing iconic about a cell phone.

And hello one person who wants to find out how to call your credit card company to renegotiate your interest rate!

Before we begin: have a good credit rating. This will give you the best bargaining power. If you don’t know your credit rating, this safe site will provide you with one free FICO score and credit report every 12 months — but beware: checking your FICO score too often can actually lower your FICO score because FICO can be like that.

Conventional wisdom says your FICO score goal is 760 or above, where conventional wisdom equals Suze Orman on Oprah. If your FICO score is currently low, hold off on calling the bank to renegotiate your rates until you can elevate your credit rating. And Bossy is going to give you a list of ways to improve your FICO score, so stay tuned.

The next thing to consider: time. This interest rate negotiation may take a while if your call is bounced around. Maybe a half an hour? It will be worth it.

And finally before placing your phone call, research your goal. Maybe you have one credit card with a low rate and you want to ask the credit card company in question to match it. Or you can open all of that junk mail in your recycling pile to see what those credit card companies are offering so you can ask your company to match that. But it’s good to have an interest rate in mind.

And just for kicks, know what the current Prime Lending Rate is before you speak with anyone. The Prime Rate is the benchmark the banks use in setting their own interest rates, and the Prime Rate can be Googled. For instance, currently the Prime Rate is 4.00 — where currently equals sister mercy it’s the afternoon and Bossy is still in her pajamas.

OK, with all of that out of the way, who’s ready to make the call?

The first thing you want to do is dial the credit card’s Customer Service number, which is located on the back of your credit card, and tell them you’ve been a customer for (blank) amount of time and ask for a lower rate. They may tell you there is nothing they can do. They may explain your only option is to opt out of the card, which means they provide a lower rate for the period of the card’s loan as long as you don’t accrue new charges.

But perhaps you decide neither option is acceptable because you want to continue charging on your credit card at a lower interest rate. So this is where you ask to speak with the Manager, and when you say that, try to sound like Bossy’s Grandma Charlotte who was always five seconds from sending her Eggplant Parmesan back to the restaurant’s kitchen.

Occasionally the person on the phone will tell you they are the manager, and repeat there’s nothing they can do. Or they will provide a direct phone number for a manager who will tell you there’s nothing they can do.

Then try using the word supervisor instead of manager.

It is suggested to practice “controlled rage” during these conversations — never curse but always remind them there is in fact something they can do, describe your excellent customer standing, and threaten to take your business elsewhere. Go for firm but polite.

Be prepared that all of this talk may situate you on the fast track to Nowheresville. This is where your perseverance is key, where your perseverance equals thank gah we’re not talking about Bossy’s perseverance because she would be sucking her thumb already.

Because the next step is to hang up and call the credit card company’s corporate office. That’s right, Bossy said their corporate office. Bossy thought this sounded too hard, but she easily found a bunch of phone numbers by Googling specific names. Here is a site that lists the contact numbers for a list of credit card companies, such as Capital One, Chase, Bank of America, Advanta, etc.

When you get the corporate office on the line, ask for the company’s president. Bossy isn’t even kidding; and when you ask for the president, do it by name — which is something that is easily determined by another Google search, and about that? How sorry are Customer Service agents that there ever was a Google?

Anyway. The point is: they’re never going to connect you with the president of the company. And if they do please tell that president you know a certain blogger who could really use a high-paying job promoting their stunning customer service.

Instead, they will most likely ask who is calling and why, which is when you’re going to firmly convey how disappointed you are in their customer service because you are trying to secure a lower interest rate and have not been adequately helped and blah blah firm but sweet blah.

The number you are really trying to reach this whole time is the company’s Escalated Customer Service. This department title changes depending on the company, but you get the point. The deal is: you will know when you’ve reached someone with decision-making capacity because they will probably take your information and tell you they need to look into it and call you back. This person needs to be armed with all of your facts, including your devoted history with the company and your credit rating. Be nice!

And good luck. If you have been through this process yourself or have any tips to share, please leave a comment below. Remember: Bossy isn’t a professional, she just plays one on the Web.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I recently called and canceled a lot of my store cards so I wouldn’t be tempted, and almost all of them tried to offer me a lower interest rate just based on my cancel call. It was infuriating, because I didn’t want them anymore, but… lower! Lower!

    Does Bossy know the deal about canceling credit cards? I get conflicting opinions. Some people say don’t, because it hurts your credit rating. These same people say to just let them cancel themselves. Then people say that they never, ever cancel themselves and it’s okay. Blargh! Fie!

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  2. Escalation is the way to go. Also, polite but firm. (Sometimes I get a little ragey, and can actually feel the door slam shut as I retch and sputter into the phone.) Most of the low-level schmoes who actually answer the phones are psychically whipped by constant customer contact, plus have no power anyway. But a supervisor in an Iowa call center actually WIPED AWAY 2k in overseas calling card charges back when I had an unfortunate breakup in Milan and spent the next month calling my therapist in SF from my friend’s house in London. So crying helps, too. She is still my hero. Give people an opportunity to make you their good deed for the day.

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  4. Great topic, Bossy! I just recently did this, myself. At first, they told me that they couldn’t do anything, but it was a credit card that is through my bank, so the person that I was talking to had access to ALL of my accounts at the same time, so I pointed out that she could take a look at my savings account and see that I had all of the cash on hand that I needed to just cancel and pay that card off, if I chose, but golly…I would just love (bat eyelashes here) to keep that account open and remain a customer, but I wouldn’t be able to do that (bat eyelashes some more) if they couldn’t lower the rate for me.

    Of course, what the customer service rep. didn’t need to know is that, while I did have a nice chunk of cash in there, it was earmarked to pay my property taxes in January, so I couldn’t have paid that card off, even if I wanted to. I, like Bossy, want to keep the card open and just be able to charge at a lower interest rate. It worked, though. I agree with Bossy: be nice and have a good credit rating. Even if you don’t have perfect credit, it doesn’t hurt to be nice and ask. The worst they can do is say “no” and then you’re no worse off than you were before.

    I have heard mixed things, too, about whether or not to cancel the card once you’ve paid it off. I think it depends upon what your goal is and what your open credit-to-available credit ratio is (i.e. if you have lots of cards that are maxed out). I don’t think that banks/lenders like it if every card that you have is maxed out, so if you are in that situation, you might want to leave a card or two open, even after they’re paid off (assuming there’s no annual fee for doing so), just so that your ratios look better.

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  5. you know what i hate more than credit cards?

    nothing.

    well, Hitler… then credit cards. oh and hang nails… those things smart… but then credit cards. but Hitler more than hang nails.

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  6. I found out the hard way what the deal is about canceling a card – part of the insanely complicated calculation is based on how long you’ve had continuous credit with the companies in your credit report. Once you close an account, it is still reported for something like 7 years. If you close your oldest accounts, after 7 years your reported credit history will suddenly shorten. That is the reason that after 25 years of marriage my credit score is 50 points lower than my husbands. I have always been careful to keep credit in my own name, but several years ago I was consolidating credit and eliminating unused accounts. I didn’t know about the length of credit history thing and closed my oldest accounts because they had higher interest. Live and learn, I guess.

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  7. I know someone who’s never had a credit card in his life, never been overdrawn even. He eventually decided to take out a loan to buy an expensive item, although technically he could have paid cash, and was REFUSED CREDIT because he had no credit rating. Still scratching my head over that one.

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  8. Somewhere I read, and I don’t feel like Googling it, that the csr will wait for you to ask THREE TIMES before bouncing you up the line. I’ve tried it, polite, firm, THREE TIMES, and it has generally worked.

    Also, I don’t know about cancelling cards, but you can have too much credit. Don’t take all those store cards for the 15% off “today”. Tomorrow you will have problems.

    THree times is the charm.

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  10. this sounds like great advice, Bossy. but, vuboq would like to remind people that this tactic doesn’t work if, say, you are calling an EPA hotline for information about compliance with EPA regulations. the people on the phone *can’t* change the law. srsly.

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  11. I just recently (within the last month) contacted all of my creditors including a GoldOption Loan with Bank of America explaining that I had been with them a considerably amount of time with no delinquent payments. I thanked them for their services and then asked if they could (and here’s where it gets deep) see their way clear to offer me a lower percentage rate as I would be more likely to use the card if I knew the interest rate was lower on THEIR card as opposed to ANOTHER card. All but AMEX lowered my interest by at least 1.4% (not much…but is is something) and then thanked me for being a loyal user.

    In all things (including finances) I try to remember what my dad used to say. Don’t be afraid to ask…ever. The worst they can do is say no.

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  12. Great advice, though I was hypnotized by the gorgeous photo of the telephone. So shiny and pretty!

    We used to have an old rotary dial phone growing up, but it was beige and smudgy. If it looked like this one I’d still be using it, screw cell phones.

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  13. Had a finance guy at a car dealership tell me, today, that companies extending credit essentially treat any score over 730 exactly the same.

    I don’t know if this means anything in the “lower my interest rate” game.

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  17. I’M ONE OF THOSE DAMNEDABLE PEOPLE WHO PAYS OFF HIS CREIDT CARDS EVERY MONTH. OF COURSE, THERE WERE TIMES IN MY LIFE WHERE THE CARDS ATE ME UP. BUT, BEING OLD, I HAVE LEARNED

    GRAMPS

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  18. Well… thanks alot bossy, cause now that i went and printed out my 38 pg free credit report I realize i have $91,446 of debt and no lovely husband to share it with! Since I recently went into $36,351 of it with a student loan and also increased my income by $20,000 a year so I figure that it was a good investment. I am still trying to find out my FICO score…..

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  22. How much would I have to fork over for Bossy to make these calls for me? My blood pressure is rising just thinking about it! But I’m going to try…unless Bossy wants to practice on my credit card(s!!!!!$%^^&#$#) company? She said. Hopefully.

    My four year old daughter got an offer for a pre-approved gold card in the mail Friday.
    True story.

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  24. I generally have had success with just asking the first customer service person. Either I’m lucky or I could have gotten a better deal than the first person gave me by climbing the ladder. I’m not sure which.

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  26. Part of your credit score is the length of your credit history. If you cancel cards that you have had for a long time, you shorten your credit history and your score suffers. So – I never close cards anymore.

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  27. We have a phone like that! My hubby dug it out of a trash bin for the kids to play with…ha. No one is playing with it much anymore…but maybe I’ll plug it in to see if I can get a customer service rep by spinning the rotary dial!

    Great tips on lowering your interest rate… I’m looking for a few tips too – here’s my Poverty Post for the month…
    http://coffeeteasodapoppeets.blogspot.com/2008/12/poverty-party-post-2-little-help-here.html

    Sorry I am not able to do the proper code linkage there…maybe someone could teach me?!?!

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  29. We, meaning hubby, called our creditors around 4 years ago, AFTER we had been derelict(hey! There’s no squiggly line letting me know how to spell!!)for several months. In the case of REALLY bad credit, they will usually negotiate for little or NO interest, if the threat of bankruptcy is great enough. We also used a non-profit credit-counseling agency who got us a monthly payment, consolidated it all, and of course, took our good credit rating with him too. But at least there was money for the important things – bras, and such.

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  30. Huh. I just called my credit card company and asked them to lower my APR. And they did, right then and there, by 5%. It was very easy. And it makes me think I should/could have bargained for an even lower number!

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  31. Oh, and about canceling cards. One thing people have mentioned (correctly) is that your credit rating takes into account the length of your credit history. So if you have an account that’s been open 5 years and one that’s been open 10 years and all other things being equal, it’s better to close the one that’s newer. However, your total available credit is factored in as well. So if your five-year old account has a 10,000 limit and your ten-year old account has a $500 limit, it’s generally better to keep the higher amount line open, as canceling it would drastically lower the amount of credit available to you. This is why I canceled my JCPenney (2001, $500 limit) and Mervyn’s (2005, $700 limit) accounts but left open my Old Navy (2006, $2300 limit) even though I don’t really use any of them. I’ve had a VISA since 2000 and canceling the JCPenney account didn’t really hurt me in the grand scheme of things. I’ve put a reminder on my calendar to check my credit report every 4 months…once a year from each company, for free.

    Thank you, Bossy, for motivating me to be financially healthier. I’ve taken a good wack at my credit card debt, increased my savings, changed my cell phone plan, and just lowered my credit card interest rate. I hope your Poverty Party posts are as helpful/motivational to other people as to me!!!

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  32. As a sign of the the times, our credit card actually contacted us in a very nice letter to inform us that they were cancelling our account. Hmmm, how nice? To be fair, it was connected with a home equity line of credit. And also to be fair, they let us keep the $60k balance due…

    PS I mentioned Bossy in my last blog post but it was sort of an anti-poverty party story about spending too much from the 30th floor of a swanky restaurant bar. Sorry.

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