How I Lowered my Credit Card APR

I just renegotiated the APR rate on one of my credit cards.  It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be; the only hard part was getting through the automated telephone menu — and working up the courage to call and ask.

I had to read the I Will Teach You to be Rich and Get Rich Slowly personal finance blogs multiple times in order to make sure I had the steps down.  (I don’t always think quick on my feet, which is probably why I write well and make new friends slowly.)  Once I had the basics in mind, I did a little research and figured out the difference in APRs between my two credit cards — would you believe I was paying a higher APR for the credit card that I’ve had for the longer amount of time?  I’m talking twice the APR of my other card.  Part of it was due to a fluke: I had paid late two months in a row, and my APR jumped up to penalize me.  A stupid mistake with a simple fix — I switched over to automatic payments.  I hoped this wouldn’t jeopardize my chances of lowering my APR.

Next, I read some other articles about renegotiating the rate. Here are the basics:

• Try not to ask yes or no questions because it’s easy for them to say no (i.e. Can you lower my APR? No)

• Back up your request with all the good deeds you’ve done for the company like paying on time, paying above the minimum every time, or having a long history with the company

• Be polite

• Do your research and get rates from other comparable credit card companies, and then threaten to switch to another credit card if things aren’t going as well as you’d hoped

I didn’t have to resort to that last bullet point there, but I did stick with the first three.  Once I called, I spoke with a very nice man and made sure to call him by name, which I always think is a nice touch.  He lowered my APR to its original rate upon request — he called it a “one time courtesy,” to threaten me, I suppose into paying on time forever and ever or else. Then I asked if he could do any better, and I started telling him about how awesome I was as a customer and how I have a lower rate on a different — and much better — credit card. He either didn’t want to hear it or realized I wasn’t going to give up easily, because then he lowered the rate even more.

I realize now I should have said something like, “thank you, but I was really hoping to match my other credit card’s APR. How can we make this happen?” but I got too excited and said thank you and goodbye instead. Whoops! I still got a much better rate. Would I have reached that shiny goal of a matching APR? I guess we’ll never know….