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Today my wife tried again to get her rate lowered on her Chase (formerly WaMu/Providian) card that currently has a 31.99% interest rate. She's been paying on it like crazy for a couple years (on time) and every time she has tried they tell her that they can't help her. Today we were thinking maybe since it's Chase now that they would help, but the person said that they are not authorized to do that and the supervisor is not either... they said she could write a letter to try, and either mail or fax it.
Any advice on how to go about this? I didn't see a real back door number listed for them. What sort of letter would be most effective?
FYI: she got denied for other cards to do a transfer, probably because her UTIL is high...
Good luck with this ... I too had been ratejacked by WAMU before being bought out by Chase ...Chase was more than happy to convert the card over to one of their Chase products (I already had a Perfect Card) ...it took about 10 seconds and it was done ..however when I asked to lower the rate due to a unfounded rate jack they said they could not override the rate that was set by WAMU ...
I then told them to combine my card with my current Chase Card ... they left a $500 balance on the WAMU card and transferred the remaining credit ( I think it was 3-5k over to my PerfectCard)
I was satisfied ....
Still pisses me off that wamu rate jacked me but oh well ...they are gone and I am still buying and getting paid so oh well ...
@Anonymous wrote:
I have had no luck with this.
I got rate jacked from 9.99 to 17.99 to 26.99 for NO REASON!
I have called Wamu (before Chase took over) they said no.
I have called Chase 2x they said no and I wrote a letter and got a reply I have the lowest % for my card at the time.
Actually there may be a reason. Banks can use interest rates as a deterrent for carrying long term balances. If the bank does not want a lot of balances, then higher APR will provide incentive to many to pay off as fast as possible and use the card more like a charge or debit card.
My rate moving from WAMU to Chase took the APR up to 29.99%. And I confess that the strategy works....I don't carry a balance.
BUT, I prefer this method of the bank getting balances lower than that of BoA and AMEX who CLD to get the same job done. If I had to pick between a higher APR and CLD/Balance chasing, I prefer the higher APR.