Chase will sometimes lower APRs. Capital One never. Are the balances you've listed actual balances being carried, or just the current balances from spending during the current billing cycle? If you're carrying balances from month-to-month, most lenders won't lower your APR as there's not really any incentive for them to. With Amex and Citi, you can just hop on chat and ask them if there are offers to lower your APR. Note that with Citi, if they grant you a lower APR you would need to hop back on chat and keep asking until they eventually tell you no. For some reason if you're eligible for a big decrease in APR, they can't give it to you all in one shot.
@K-in-Boston wrote:Chase will sometimes lower APRs. Capital One never. Are the balances you've listed actual balances being carried, or just the current balances from spending during the current billing cycle? If you're carrying balances from month-to-month, most lenders won't lower your APR as there's not really any incentive for them to. With Amex and Citi, you can just hop on chat and ask them if there are offers to lower your APR. Note that with Citi, if they grant you a lower APR you would need to hop back on chat and keep asking until they eventually tell you no. For some reason if you're eligible for a big decrease in APR, they can't give it to you all in one shot.
So chatted with Citi just now, they said only one of my cards was eligible for about a 2% reduction. So I took it. It was the Citi Diamond Preferred and not the American Airlines one. I do tend to carry balances from month to month, but I make large payments. For Example, I just made a $3K+ payment to Amex BCP and $3K to PenFed. Leaving just a few hundred dollars. I do that generally with all my cards, except for one or two which I put some purchases and pay them down $1K each month, but then put on about $500 in charges again. So they come down. I can of course pay them all off down to zero, but understanding on my part was the where FICO was concerned, that might be good to go down to 0% utilization. I stay around 9% Utilization. Am I wrong?
@merlinflex wrote:So chatted with Citi just now, they said only one of my cards was eligible for about a 2% reduction. So I took it. It was the Citi Diamond Preferred and not the American Airlines one. I do tend to carry balances from month to month, but I make large payments. For Example, I just made a $3K+ payment to Amex BCP and $3K to PenFed. Leaving just a few hundred dollars. I do that generally with all my cards, except for one or two which I put some purchases and pay them down $1K each month, but then put on about $500 in charges again. So they come down. I can of course pay them all off down to zero, but understanding on my part was the where FICO was concerned, that might be good to go down to 0% utilization. I stay around 9% Utilization. Am I wrong?
Congrats on Citi! Keep asking them every day through chat until they tell you that you have no offers. I bet you can get that one drastically lower. So for the FICO scoring, you don't want all of your cards showing a $0 balance because you will take a hit on your score for not using your credit. However, any small balance reported as your "statement balance" is fine, which would just be normal use throughout the month. Not only is there no need to carry a balance from month to month, but there is a big reason for not doing that - interest. In addition to accruing interest on any unpaid statement balance from the previous month, you also lose your grace period for new purchases. So that $1000 flight you booked today would accrue interest from the time it's charged until the time you pay it off a month or two later. That will usually completely negate any rewards you receive on a credit card.
So chatted in to Amex just now. They lowered rates on both cards I was looking to get lowered on.
Amex Blue: was 21.49 now 18.75%
Amex Delta: was 19.24 now 17.24%
So Amex and Citi, at least the one of two cards were successful.
Guess I will give up on Chase and Cap1 for now as judging by the responses here, it would be a no go. Thoughts if otherwise?
Advice, stop trying, Apr and Chase go together like cats and dogs.