The Weight of Money

It’s been a little more than 2 months since my last phone call campaign to save money, more than three months since calling my credit card companies. Due to pure failure on my part, I needed to make this call but was a little hesitant. Thanks to Canadian Sadie of Cleaning House’s comment, I finally build up enough courage to call (btw, Canadian Sadie, it’s time for you to take action too!).

I needed to call because I missed a credit card payment by pure fault of my own. I was hesitant because I called this company only a few months before for a missed payment, that time due to mail mix-ups related to moving. Knowing they’d granted the request last time made me very sheepish about abusing that consideration. But, as my mom always said, whats the worst they can say, no?

Call #1: With tail firmly tucked, I made the call and laid out the situation. The agent politely responded that due to my previous (and recent) request, he couldn’t help me at this time. I thanked him for checking and admitted that was the outcome that I expected. And then, for no apparent reason, he said “well, I’ve gone ahead and waived that missed payment and fee, but be aware that we will not be able to do that again.” What? Wow! That was rather unexpected and he got my thanks yet again and then I proceed to ask him about current balance transfer offers. More on that in a moment.

Call #2: In the last two months, our primary use credit card jacked their rate up 6%!!! This was absolutely unacceptable and I went ahead and called them too after resolving the missed payment with the previous call. I politely explained why I was calling, but also firmly commented on how this is unacceptable when my other cards had rates more than 50% less than theirs. I let them know that I was prepared to transfer the full balance to another card, but wanted to give them the chance to keep our business — because after 20 years of good business, that seemed only fair. She looked at the account, commented on how we have a perfect payment record, no late payments, and have been a long time customer, and agreed that recent increase makes no sense to her. But, the best she could do for us was send us some paperwork and make us jump through various hoops just to get our previous rate back. Sure, I’ll jump the hoops to drop our rate, but I’ll also transfer over the balance since that was her best offer.

Call #3: I called the first company back and processed the balance transfer based on the rates I was provided earlier (which improved once the late payment was waived). The rates were comparable with other offers we’ve received, but the biggest plus was that in terms of credit utilization, that card could absorb the entire balance of the other without flinching. I’ve been wanting to make this transfer for a while and am happy it’s done. We’ll save more than $1,000 in interest this year and I get the satisfaction of a silent ‘ha!’ to call #2 who didn’t think 20 years of service was worth more prompt attention.

Previous Make the Call Posts:
• Save Money: Make the Call
• Save Money: Make the Call II
• Save Money: Make the call III

Just make the call - whats the worst they can say? Whats the best they can say?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 3:34 pm and is filed under debt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.