How to experiment with asking banks to lower your credit card interest rate | Call Kurtis
There's no doubt that credit card balances are at record highs these days. In fact, from 2021 until the end of 2023, credit balances jumped 47 percent. That's the steepest three-year climb on record. Ongoing inflation is one reason that consumers are relying increasingly more on their plastic to pay their bills.
Credit card interest rates are also at record highs. Some consumers have interest rates on their cards reaching nearly 30 percent. Forbes says the average rate right now is higher than 27 percent. In other words, if you have a $7,500 credit card balance and pay $175 a month on it, it would take more than 11 ½ years to pay it off. That's a whopping $16,319 in interest alone!
That's why CBS13 and the Call Kurtis consumer investigative team devised an idea on how to lower what consumers owe on their credit cards -- and it begins with a simple phone call.
Our experiment includes a script we wrote for consumers to read over the phone to their credit card companies in an effort to lower their interest rates.
Here's what we asked them to say to their banks:
"What is my current interest rate?"
"I've been a loyal customer. I've noticed other banks are offering lower interest rates. Even zero percent on balance transfers. I was curious how low you can get my interest rate."
If a consumer didn't get positive results from our script experiment, we wrote the following for them to ask their banks:
"I'd hate for this interest rate to drive me away from your service. What can you or your supervisor do for me?"
So, can our experiment work?
Jadell Lee of Sacramento was willing to give our experiment a try. He tells us he has more than $34,000 in balances on his nine credit cards.
"With the interest rates, it just becomes unmanageable," Lee said. "When it comes to interest rates, it becomes impossible to get out of it, when you're in a certain amount of debt."
Lee's Capital One card has a sky-high interest rate of 29.74 percent. On two of his other cards, Discover is at 28.24 percent, and Chase is at 22.49 percent.
Lee called Capital One first. After a few minutes, he was told there were no options to drop his interest rates at the present time.
"They say there's nothing they could do," he explained. "They were really friendly when you're applying."
Lee called Chase next. They also refused to lower his rate, but did say he could possibly open a new card and score a better rate.
But, Discover offered him an exciting option: zero percent interest for 12 months on anything he buys from this time forward.
"You can't beat zero percent," he said. "It just makes it more manageable. I can focus on paying down credit card debt, and not thinking that 28 percent whatever the balance is gets caked on each month. I'll take it."
For Lee, all he had to do was read our script.
"It feels nice," he said, with a smile. "It actually made my day."
Please remember that CBS13 is the only station in town with a team to go to bat for you. And, if you have a consumer problem you can't resolve, let us know about it by filling out our form.
