Credit Card Advice From An Insider

Wanted to share this interesting post I found at DailyKos.com, courtesy of Lava20.


Who am I? My name is Nicole. I worked for the two largest credit card companies in the world. I worked in various departments, but the most important department I worked for was customer service. This advice is just one friend to another. It is based on my own personal experience with what does and doesn't work.

1. Protest every fee. Overdraft fees. Late fees. Call and ask for the fee to be waived. If you were late. Call. If they tell you no. Ask again. If they tell you no. Ask for a supervisor. Most fees can be waived. The times the bank will not waive a fee is if you are 60 days or more behind. Or if you are always over your credit limit. I promise you. If you are willing to spend the time. That fee will be waived. This works about 85% of the time. I'll be honest here. The only reason that they may not waive the fee is if you are over 30 days late in the last 6 months or over 60 days in the last 12 months. So catch up if you can. Then make that call. You might be part of that 15%.

2. Report your card as lost or stolen. WHAT? Yes. This goes for debit cards also. Once you give out your credit card number, you have no control over who has access to your information. How often? I do this twice a year. If you shop online a great deal, do it more often. I know no one who reads this surfs porn, but if one does do this, you might want to cancel your cards more often. It doesn’t effect your credit report any, if at all. As long as you’re not doing it every week on every card, you’re fine. This is also helpful to prevent id theft.

[Note from Your Credit Mama: If you struggle to pay your minimums or have a hard time keeping your account below the limit, DO NOT DO THIS. If you are late on your payment or over your limit or have an internal "credit score" too low, or bad credit elsewhere, when you call to do this, they will close your account since it was "stolen" but may NOT issue you a new card. Also, many card issuers now routinely issue replacement cards after a certain period of time.]

3. If the bank makes an error, it’s never in your favor. So don’t do any sort of direct authorization to your checking account. For example, you might give your checking account number and routing number so that the minimum payment will be charged every month. Not a good idea. Errors can happen. I have seen many times where the bank has charged the members account for the total credit card balance instead of the minimum balance. This causes the members checking accounts to become overdrawn. The bank may be required to reimburse you for their own credit card fees. But it is completely up to the credit card company if they pay your banks fees (overdraft fees, fees to the store you wrote the check to etc.) Don't risk it. Your best bet here: Use your personal banking account and sign up with your bank to pay bills online.

4. Do not sign up for anything the credit card company wants to auto bill you for. Save yourself the time and headache. Insurance. Fraud protection. This is a billion dollar industry. And normally you will get no benefit from it. In fact, you will most likely spend more time trying to cancel it than any benefit you will receive from it. I have yet to meet the person who saved time or money with a fraud prevention unit that they couldn't do on their own. If you want to, go for it. Good luck. You're going to need it.

5. The only thing that will save you money is time. You must call. Every single time. Program the customer service number to your credit card company into your phone. right now. You don’t have to have your credit card number to call. Have them look your account up by your Social Security Number or name. Call every month to ask for lower interest rates. To have fees waived. To check your balance. To lower your credit limit. For every little thing.

I want to give an example here. Two different accounts. One group of members have high credit limits, pay off their bill in full every month. The other group pays as much as they can every month and has interest fees. Who saves the most? The first. Why? Because they call. They will have us read off every damn purchase. They will have us explain in detail over and over again how the interest is calculated. They will stay on the phone for 30 minutes to get the $50 yearly membership fee waived. And you know what? It works. They get a free service, basically. And bravo. The credit card company expects this. They also count on you, the person reading this right now, to be the person who doesn't do this.

One other thing I would like to bring up with this diary. Sometimes things happen. For example, I’ve seen entire zip codes where card members statements arrive late. Thousands may not receive their statement in enough time to mail the payment. This is strange because it appears that most of these card members all live in the same zip code, or they may all hold Union cards (the highest interest rate and the most revolvers – people who carry balances.) This makes the card member late in sending in a payment. And wouldn’t you know it. Millions of late fees. Most call to have the fees reversed. That’s fine with the credit card company. Because they only really need 10% to not bother.

Did you just say 10%? Yes. That’s all they need really. It doesn’t cost them anything if you never call. In fact, they can save here too. What would a smart bank do?: on the days the late mailed statement arrives, make sure that is the day that most of your customer service representatives are off. That way people will have to wait longer to get through to a live agent. Many don’t want to spend their Saturdays waiting for a customer service rep to answer. So they hang up. BINGO that 10% just went to 12% now. Millions. So again. Read #1.

One neat trick credit card companies use is to shorten the amount of time you have to send in a payment. This varies by bank. Normally you want 25 days. I've seen as short as 20. Call. Ask them for a longer length of time to send you bill in. Even if you don't need it. Why have the bank earn interest on the money if you can?

One final word of advice. Try not to sign up for auto anything. Again, it is so very difficult to get things auto-billed to stop. The company might be great, but unless you are getting a huge discount, I wouldn’t take the risk. If you do insist on auto-billing make sure you do #2! And if you do have things auto billed...make sure it is to a debit or credit card. That way you can easily report it lost/stolen when your friendly everyday auto insurance company decides to raise your premiums and change from monthly to biannual.

Okay. I saved the best for last. Guess what will work more than all the other things listed her combined? BE NICE!!! W T F?!?! Yes, calling with a bitchy attitudes actually inspires a customer service representative to do the least they can for you. Now, I may be taking the 100th call for the day about the statement arriving late, and all 99 of them have been royal jerks...then I get lucky number 100...who has read this diary and might start off the conversation like this, "Thank you so much for taking my call, I really hate to call with this, but do you think you can help me out with this late fee..." Throw in the customer service representative's name, no matter how horrid, tell them you love that name...