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Have you tried to lower your credit card rates?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When it comes to credit cards, we’ve always been told to look for the best rate. That’s particularly important for those of us who choose to carry a balance because all that interest adds up.
Let’s assume you have a credit card balance of $5,000 at 8.99 percent interest. If you didn’t charge anything else to that account and simply paid the monthly minimum balance, it would take you about nine years and 10 months to get a zero balance and would have had $1,122.54 in interest.
For those of you with good to great credit, you can get rates ranging from 6.25 percent to 17 percent.
But have you ever wondered how high interest rates can go? There’s practically no limit because many of the largest credit card lenders are in South Dakota or Delaware and other states with no usury laws on their books or liberal caps that set the maximum rate pretty high.
For example, Chase Bank and Citibank right now charge as much as 29.24 percent interest to those customers who fail to make their monthly payments on time to any of their creditors. Bank of America charges up to 29.99 percent for those customers, while American Express’ Blue card and Discover demand 27.24 percent and 30.99 percent respectively.
If you think that’s high, try being someone with bad credit in the United Kingdom. One British institution, Vanquis Bank charges anywhere from 19.94 percent to 59.94 percent on purchases depending upon how dinged the applicant’s credit is. And if that customer chooses to get a cash advance, the rate for that — which is calculated separately from purchases, as is common with credit cards — ranges from 33.97 percent to 74.75 percent.
Bankers say higher risk customers need to be charged more to mitigate that risk and they have a point. But where should they draw the line? If someone is such a bad risk that they have to pay 59 percent interest is a credit card company being responsible? What rates are you paying on your cards? Are you finding it hard to get your companies to lower your rates?
Comments
By JJ
May 1, 2008 9:24 AM | Link to this
I do not own one single credit card, all I have is my debit card. I am debt free, other than my mortage!!!
WOOHOO!!!
By JJ
May 1, 2008 9:37 AM | Link to this
JJ, thats a wonderful blessing to be debt free. Wish it was ME! If I didn’t have credit card debt I wouldn’t be in the whole.
By JJ
May 1, 2008 9:59 AM | Link to this
High-jacking my name are ya? ha ha.
I have not had a credit card in close to 20 years. I learned my lesson the hard way. I pay cash for everything. I don’t finance anything either, except the mortgage.
I tell ya, it’s a great feeling.
By tk
May 1, 2008 10:00 AM | Link to this
I only have one credit card and the credit card company charges me prime (6% currently).
By ali
May 1, 2008 10:28 AM | Link to this
On one of my credit cards, the rate was 24% or something like that. I threatened to shut them down if they didn’t lower it and mentioned their competitor’s rates as well. That interest rate is now 8%.