Fighting with Bank of America
I’m not a fan of paying high interest on credit cards, which is part why I opened a 0% card to transfer. I’m thinking I may need to open something else if I cannot get anywhere with Bank of America. Currently I am at 17.24% which is down from 25.24% when they screwed up a payment because of a Saturday, the computer said it was late, I called them up and got the late fee cleared, but my APR got rocked the next month. I got this rate down a few months ago and decided to call them up again to see if they’ll lower it more.
After a long hold time I got to the first person who cannot do much of anything so they transferred me to an account manager to handle my question. Waiting on an inner hold even longer, I finally got someone to talk to me. Asked them for a lower rate and they told me my rate was the best they could do for me. I told them other companies are giving me offers for 9.9% and lower, but she wouldn’t budge.
So this is where I start to get frustrated and annoyed. I asked them why they won’t lower my rate and they said the rate is based on several factors. They look at the overall balance in relation to credit limit, amount of monthly payments, and how much I use the credit card per billing cycle. She then went on and told me a credit card is a short term loan. By using it I am borrowing money from them at the best rate I can get, but then they expect a payment for that. I told her I don’t like to be lectured on how a credit card works and corrected her that a credit card is a revolving line, not a term loan.
This is where it got real interesting. I told her if I bought $200 in gas per month on my card, then added $200 to my regular payment, would that lower the rate? She told me yes it would! That doesn’t make any sense that I can increase the balance and payment just to get a better rate from Bank of America. I would still be paying down the same amount but they don’t see it like that. It’s not worth fighting with them anymore and I think I’m going to transfer that balance to something else. It will be nice to get my smaller cards paid off so I could really focus on paying these other cards with higher balances off quicker.
It makes sense because they are getting more money out of you that way. If you make a purchase September 5 for $200, that increases your balance by $200. Since you do carry a balance, you are being charged interest based on the average daily balance of the account during the billing cycle. That $200 gets included, so even though you pay an extra $200 when the bill is due - say October 1, they’re making more money on the interest which allows them to lower your rate without really saving you much.
Yep, time to surf that balance…
BofA is where I surfed a balance to back in May, 0% for a year offer. Even when it goes up to 12%, it’ll still be lower than the stupid Discover card that it got surfed from.
I wish I could get it paid down some before then, but that’s not likely to happen. One account ahead of it in my snowball, and it’s going to be another four and a half months to pay off.
That’s ridiculous! I would transfer that balance and close that card…BofA is a pain, and you shouldn’t be treated like that!
I can sympathize with you completely regarding your frustrations with the credit card companies.
I also just got off the phone with American Express attempting to have my interest rate reduced from 19.24% and they have refused to negotiate.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article , but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.