Getting Credit Card Companies to reduce interest rate/balance?

[EllenFrasier]

Has anyone ever had success in getting their credit card companies to stop charging interest or reduce the interest rate? How about reducing the minimum monthly payment? We are current on all of our cards, but with Dh just losing his second job we might not have enough to meet the bills and I think we still need to eat.
I'm considering writing to all the CCC's and seeing if they will budge for us.

 

[njmom47]

I was successful with my Mastercard. Just call and speak to a manager (not sure if a regular customer service person would have that authority). I was never late on a payment, but I did end up closing out the account. They reduced the interest rate from 16.99 to 9.99 for a year. I have to call and re-negotiate at the end of that year. Is your payment history excellent? I'm sure that would help your case, as it did mine.

 

[okeydokey]

We tried this with Citibank last year when they were about to raise our rates from 14.9 to 18.9. We had been customers for 20 years and never missed a payment. They refused to budge so closed out the account, paid off the balance and got a Capital One account instead.

 

[Parkers_girl]

I just did this yesterday with my two bank of america cards. I told them my hours at work were cut in half, which they were, and my interest rate went from over 20 percent on each card, to 5 on one and 6 on the other. Plus my minimum payment when from 113 to 50 on one card, and from 70 to 30 on the other. I also did the same thing with a gemoney card I have, interest rate went from 30 to 9 percent and minimum payment went from 60 to 19. This helped out my situation a lot and I can now not worry about making the minimum's each month, I plan to have them all paid off within a year though, as the agreements last about 16 months.

 

[Aidan's Mommy]

We did this as well when all of the credit cards were hiking up interest rates a little over a year ago. We were able to negotiate them down to 5% on two of them, but GM Card refuses to budge at their 14%. The ones that did lower the rates, we basically told them that we were just going to stop paying them because we couldn't afford to go from 8% to 29%. We closed all of our cards (I know that's bad for your credit, but it was a move we had to make) and we are now just living off what we have in our checking/savings accounts. It has been hard, but we are doing it!

 

[Jeff_G]

You can reduce it to 0%, by paying it off and closing the account. I dont miss mine at all!

When closing one of my cards, the customer service rep asked why, and I told her I no longer wanted to cary debt and was going to an all cash life style. Her response, "...I'm doing the same thing!" Lol Even the people who work for the credit card companies dont want to use their products... Sure says something...

 

[EllenFrasier]

Thanks, I'll give it a try. We have to do something with the price of everything going up and Dh's income going down soon. Wish me luck!

 

[jfulcer]

Some advice I heard some time ago: Try to get them to cut down the percent, and then send as much extra as you can to the SMALLEST bill. Pay that off as quickly as possible. Once it's paid, then take all of that money you were paying on that first one and start paying it on the second smallest. Each time you pay off a card, keep doing this.

From what I've been told, it works great.