Amex won't reduce the APR on my ED card. Advice?

[Remedios]

Oh, I looked. It's not that different from regular APR 😐

[bigfoot98]

@LionLaw 

Amex does not offer APR reductions anymore, they did a few years ago from a forum search, but not now. There are few seldom reports from years ago getting apr lowered without request but they aren't new as far as I have seen. They do regularly offer a promo apr however.

If you want a lower apr you will likely need to close the card and apply for a new one. But as you said this is a backdated card and you only want to do this to get a card with low apr in case you carry a balance. Amex is the last lender I have that I would carry a balance on.

So in this case if I was in your shoes I would do one or more of the following:

If eligible open nfcu and app for their platinum card. I believe it is 5.99 right now, no bt or ca fees.

Open DCU membership, their platinum is 8.5 percent, they offer sp preapprovals and they start a 6 months after membership. No bt or ca fees and the whole limit is available unlike nfcu, it can also be used like a ploc if you open their checking account. Their savings account also pays 6.17 on up to 1k.

Find another cu with a bt card and open it up, they offer lower rates then banks. Unify and secu I believe have decent options but I do not know the specifics off hand.

[kdm31091]

Amex rarely if ever permanently lowers APR anymore. They really only offer promotions. I get that it can feel nice to have your APR lowered, but even at say, 17% vs 20%, that's still a horrible option for actually borrowing money. So it tends to make no practical difference. You would not want to float a balance on it.

[SecretAzure]

Out of sheer lunacy and knowing this is completely improbable and downright irrational, I will ask a question.

If OP applies for another of the same card, chances are they will approve OP at a lower APR due to OP's much improved credit worthiness since 2014. 

Could OP then CL transfer from current ED card to the new one, close the old one, and have the newest one back-dated to the same date as the original?

P.S. I know nothing of back-dated cards and how that works. I just like coming up with all sorts of ideas to try and manuever through usually rigid systems.

P.P.S. I'm like OP and love having the lowest APR's on all my cards although I seldom pay interest (Mint just notified me that I paid interest recently and without that I would never have known it was even a feature). You just never know when you'll need it and if you already have a balance on the card it could end up helping, albeit in a very minor way. Thankfully, all of my cards are at their lowest already (or below advertised).

[K-in-Boston]

This datapoint is ancient as it's almost 3 weeks old, but as far as never goes...

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/AMEX-APR-reductions/m-p/6244578#M1765229

Amex permanent APR reductions have never been very common, but the "Amex doesn't do permanent APR reductions" talk has been going on for as long as I have been participating here.  It's always YMMV, but usually a fairly drastic change in profile is needed for it to happen.  Amex "didn't give permanent APR reductions" when I applied for my Starwood Preferred Guest card in 2017, but I hopped on chat right after being approved for it because the computer gave me 17.24% (which was 2% higher than the lowest APR on the card) and they permanently matched the 15.24% (at the time; the Prime Rate is about 1% lower now) of my Blue and the POT feature on my charge cards.

[K-in-Boston]

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@SecretAzure wrote:

Could OP then CL transfer from current ED card to the new one, close the old one, and have the newest one back-dated to the same date as the original?

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Most of a credit line can be transferred from one card to another (as long as you're not trying to move from a business card to a personal one).  Amex stopped backdating accounts in 2015.

[LionLaw]

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@K-in-Boston wrote:

This datapoint is ancient as it's almost 3 weeks old, but as far as never goes...

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/AMEX-APR-reductions/m-p/6244578#M1765229

Amex permanent APR reductions have never been very common, but the "Amex doesn't do permanent APR reductions" talk has been going on for as long as I have been participating here.  It's always YMMV, but usually a fairly drastic change in profile is needed for it to happen.  Amex "didn't give permanent APR reductions" when I applied for my Starwood Preferred Guest card in 2017, but I hopped on chat right after being approved for it because the computer gave me 17.24% (which was 2% higher than the lowest APR on the card) and they permanently matched the 15.24% (at the time; the Prime Rate is about 1% lower now) of my Blue and the POT feature on my charge cards.

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@K-in-Boston  Thank you!  This is the kind of insight I was hoping for.  Amex is clearly stingier than other banks with APR reductions, but I'm glad to hear it's not impossible.  I note that both you and the OP in the link you posted found success by going through online chat, which I haven't tried yet; I will give that a try. 

[kdm31091]

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@K-in-Boston wrote:

This datapoint is ancient as it's almost 3 weeks old, but as far as never goes...

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/AMEX-APR-reductions/m-p/6244578#M1765229

Amex permanent APR reductions have never been very common, but the "Amex doesn't do permanent APR reductions" talk has been going on for as long as I have been participating here.  It's always YMMV, but usually a fairly drastic change in profile is needed for it to happen.  Amex "didn't give permanent APR reductions" when I applied for my Starwood Preferred Guest card in 2017, but I hopped on chat right after being approved for it because the computer gave me 17.24% (which was 2% higher than the lowest APR on the card) and they permanently matched the 15.24% (at the time; the Prime Rate is about 1% lower now) of my Blue and the POT feature on my charge cards.

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Of course they do still (occasionally) happen but as I remember,  permanent reductions w/ Amex were far more common a few years back as compared to now.

[Anonymous]

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@SecretAzure wrote:

P.S. I know nothing of back-dated cards and how that works. I just like coming up with all sorts of ideas to try and manuever through usually rigid systems.

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But it does help to know the rules to narrow down the ideas to plausible.  Myself, I plan to give the Golden Phoenix of Credit two green magic beans and it will probably set my APR to negative 12%, and then I will happily carry a balance!

[Anonymous]

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@LionLaw wrote:

Hi all.  In my never-ending quest to improve my CC portfolio, I call all of my providers once or twice a year to see if they can reduce the permanent purchase APR on my cards.  It's been a long process, but I now have all of my cards at or below thier best advertised rates.  Well, all of them, except one: my Amex Everyday card, which has never given me a single APR reduction, despite many requests over the years.  So, while all my other cards have great rates, my Amex ED is stuck at 19.99%.

Has anyone else had this problem?  Is there anything I could do to make them move?

Here's a little more background on me:

FICOs are all 800+.  DTI is around 30% (mortgage and student loans; currently no auto loan).

I started my rebuild in early 2012 (right here on the myFico forums).  When I started out, my only surviving card had been jacked to a 29.99% APR, and the early cards I got approved for all had relatively high rates.

Over the following years, I seldom carried a balance on anything, and when I did, I made sure I had a temporary 0% offer that I could take advantage of, so I wasn't impacted by the high rates on my cards.  But, as a credit junky (like everyone else here!), I wanted the best terms possible on all my cards, so I kept chipping away at those rates, requesting a reduction once or twice a year.  I could usually get a reduction of 1% or 2% with each request, but Amex has never budged.

My current portfolio:

I have an Amex Gold (opened in 2012; backdated to 2006) that gets most of my monthly spend.

I have an Amex Platinum (opened in 2013; backdated to 2006) that gets a few hundred a month in monthly spend.

My Amex ED (opened 2014; backdated to 2006) has a $35k limit and a 19.99% APR (currently, their advertised rates are 12.99% to 23.99%).  I don't run much through this card (a few thousand a year max).

I also have a Discover (2001, $20k limit), a CSP (2018, $32k limit) a BOA (2013, $17k limit), a Citi Double Cash (2012, $17k limit), and a Citi Rewards+ (2014, $20k limit).  On all of these, I have either the lowest APR they advertise, or in a couple cases, a few points below their lowest advertised.  My spending on all these is pretty minimal, and most months they all report $0 balances.

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My Amex Blue Cash started at 19.95 and I upgraded to Blue Cash Preferred which was also 19.95.Along the way BCP dropped to 14.49% APR and I am not sure which month since I couldn't access pdf billing statement before that. I never requested any APR reduction from Amex except Discover. It could be temporary but I am not sure.

Feb 2021 12.99%

Apr 2020 12.99%

Mar 2020 13.99%

Feb 2020 14.49%

Sep 2019 14.49%