If you carry a balance on any credit card, you’re probably overpaying. Not because the rate is unfair, but because you’ve never asked to make it lower. Most cardholders never do. Most who do, win.
LendingTree just published a survey of 2,000 U.S. cardholders, fielded in May and released July 9. The results are hard to argue with. 84% of the people who called their issuer and asked for a lower APR got one. The average cut was 6.3 percentage points. That’s a serious rate move for one phone call.
Only 23% ever asked. Three out of four cardholders left the money on the table without dialing.
“A lot of people just don’t think that it works,” said Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s chief credit analyst. “The data shows crystal clear that it does.”
Why does it work? Banks care about your lifetime value more than the extra half-point of interest they get from being difficult about it. Losing you costs them a few hundred bucks in fees, an origination bill for a replacement customer, and a marketing spend to sign that customer up. Trimming a few points off your APR for a few cycles is cheap by comparison.
Show me the money
The Federal Reserve pegs the average APR on cards that carry a balance at about 22%. On a $6,000 balance, a 6.3-point cut takes annual interest from roughly $1,320 to $942. That’s $378 a year off your bill, in exchange for five minutes on hold. Nobody’s handing out $378 tax refunds for making a phone call. This is closer to that than you think.
Fees follow the same script. LendingTree found 92% of late fee waiver requests were granted, and 94% of annual fee waivers or reductions. A $32 fee reversed is $32 back.
Do this now
Before you dial, do three things.
Look up your current APR on your last statement, page 1, tiny type. Note your balance. Note how long you’ve been a customer.
Pull two or three competing cards’ APRs so you can name-check them on the call. Bankrate and NerdWallet both list them. Any pre-approved offers sitting in your mail pile also work.
Then call the number on the back of the card. Be direct: “I’ve been a customer for X years, I pay on time, and I’ve seen new-card offers as low as Y%. Can you match that or get close?” If the first agent says no, ask for the retention or account services line. If that also fails, hang up and try again in a week. Different reps, different scripts.
If two attempts fail, move the balance. A 0% intro-APR balance-transfer card gives you 15 to 21 interest-free months on the transferred amount, with a 3% to 5% transfer fee. On $6,000 at 22%, you pay $180 to $300 in transfer fees and skip another year of interest. Straight win if you have a plan to clear the balance inside the intro window.
Why now
The Fed hasn’t cut rates in seven months. The July 29 FOMC meeting is widely expected to be another hold. Bank margins on cards are as wide as they’ve been in years. That’s exactly the moment when a lower-APR ask has room to land.
The bank’s bet is that you won’t call. Prove them wrong.
How Candid Yak makes money. Some of the products we write about pay us if you apply or sign up through our links. That never changes our verdict, our rankings, or the numbers in this article. We call a bad deal a bad deal whether it pays us or not. Some brands shown in our comparison tools are placeholder examples while we finalize partner agreements, and we label them as such.