topic Re: Citi Dividend Card in Credit Cards

Citi Dividend Card

pacattack81 — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 17:05:27 GMT

i just noticed an interest rate increase on the last statement from 11.40% to 18.99%...account has been opened since 2000 and is the main card i use...never had a late payment and always pay in full so the rate isn't that important to me...called up the company and they say they sent a letter to everyone in Nov. alerting them to the increase in rate...the customer service rep put me through to an account specialist to futher explain things...he reviewed my account and lowered my rate to prime + 4.99 whcih comes to 8.24%...not bad, considering the rate is now lower then it previously was

Re: Citi Dividend Card

Anonymous — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:11:33 GMT

Congrats! I think sometimes their strategy is - "well if they don't call us out on it we will keep the rate high, but if they do we will give them a fair rate"

Re: Citi Dividend Card

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:27:27 GMT

That's awesome! I actually ended up converting my Dividend to a CashReturns as the CSR suggested. He said that it all went up for the Dividend card. I'm thinking it is their way of weeding us and completely getting rid of the card. So now I am back to 9% but end up losing my 2% cash back. What a bummer.

Re: Citi Dividend Card

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:37:22 GMT

A word to the wise is to be careful, Citi is in the midst of a huge change in terms on their cards. It maybe nothing more than a small delay before they increase the rate again. I hope thats not the case, but I am just giving fair warning,

Re: Citi Dividend Card

CreditAble — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:34:21 GMT

pacattack81 wrote:
i just noticed an interest rate increase on the last statement from 11.40% to 18.99%...account has been opened since 2000 and is the main card i use...never had a late payment and always pay in full so the rate isn't that important to me...called up the company and they say they sent a letter to everyone in Nov. alerting them to the increase in rate...the

.....and lowered my rate to prime + 4.99 which comes to 8.24%...not bad, considering the rate is now lower then it previously was
If a person always PIFs there is no purpose to raise the interest rate...YET.

After the new rules go into effect there will be a reason.

In the past whenever a card issuer would raise my interest rate, I would call and ask why the rate was raised. It didn't matter what the answer was according to the script the CSR was reading, my response was always the same.

"Why would you raise the interest rate on a customer who never carries a balance? Wouldn't you want to encourage me to cary a balance? You should leave the interest rate the same or actually lower the rate to seduce me into caring a balance."

I further pointed out that should I carry a balance in the future the card company could raise the rate at anytime it wanted to.

My results have always been the same as yours. An interest rate reduction.

Of course the trick is to only carry a balance when absolutely necessary and PIF within a few months so that the credit card company doesn't raise the interest rate when a consumer "carries a balance in the future".

In the future, because of the consumer credit "reform", congress has "reformed" the ability of PIFers to get rate jacks reversed simply by asking.

The card companies will no longer be able to raise the interest rate after PIFers "start to revolve balances". Even if a PIFer wants to revolve a balance for only a few months, he will be stuck with higher interest rates.

There is a high probability that all PIFers will get rate hikes when the new rules go into effect.

As you pointed out though, we don't really care because we do pay in full and don't usually pay any interest anyway. If they double or triple our interest rates we will be all the more sure to never revolve a balance even for a few months.