5/20/2009

Yes I think you would take what you can get and as time progresses you will be offered better interest rates or apply for new cards. This has been my experience in this anyway so I would figure that is how it would be with all credit cards.

Credit cards will not lower interest rates unless it's a miracle especially at this time with the recession going on. That's how they recover the money they have lost from all the customers that filed BK on them. Porgy stated an interesting fact today. Cap1 lost $21 billion in the past 5 months. I better my Cap1 statement to see if they increase my APR to 40% lol They will probably do that if they want to recover that $21 billion they lost.

I don’t think they would agree with our decided APR. They have their own policies and they don’t alter it at any cost. I tried this once and failed to convince them.

I believe the interest rates is based on the information they receive from the credit bureau to begin with so it might be based on credit score which you then would not be able to dictate. I have known people with AAA credit to request lower interest rates to chage thier card over to another company and they were accomodated.

You are correct smcc, and injsarauer.

In the begining you have to take what you can get, when time goes on, that is when the barganing table comes in.

This may be possible if you have an excellent credit history/rating; otherwise, I think it is as the other posters mentioned and you'd need to establish a history with this particular company before negotiating the rate. That said, credit card companies are tightening their standards more these days, so negotiating rates is going to become more challenging.

I agree with smcc.

I would think you could not dictate to them that you would accept the card only if you could have a certain interest rate. They would approve you for the card, watch your payment history, see if you pay more than the minimum, and then consider dropping your interest rate over a window of time.............

Lets say you get an application through the post and its says typical APR 17% - do you know if you can phone up and say "Yeah, I'll take you card but only at an apr of 15%"

Have you ever heard of anyone doing this?