Credit Card Consolidation

Dear Friends
I’m going to tell you a bedtime story about my friend, let’s call him Ken. This is a true story but the name has been changed. My friend Ken is a great guy; loyal, trustworthy, stubborn, and has some credit card debt. One day he asked me to look at his credit. He had a credit score of about 680, which is pretty good. He had never missed a payment on his history. Ken has several credit cards with different banks. Most of his high credit has been used. Because he has maxed out his credit lines, his score is starting to suffer. Now that he has maxed out his lines the banks are upping his APR on the accounts. He had two separate credit lines with Citibank. One card with 18 percent one with 9 percent. Many times my friend Ken has tried to consolidate his balances into one account with one lower rate. Of course, the banks want to keep him in a high rate even though Ken has good credit. Well, the other day Ken got fed up, and called Citibank like I told him. He asked them if they could consolidate both lines into one account at 9 percent. The person at the end of the line said they could not help him. Frustrated he hung up. Later when he was telling me the story he said “Ann you would have been so proud of me, I called them back.” Guess what the next person he got on the line said? “No problem.” Thus transferring his high rate card over to the lower rate. Another nice thing is now he will have a additional paid account with Citibank which will raise his credit score.
I just wanted to give this example because the banking institutions are so complex and automatized. You never know what will happen.
Persistence seems to be the best defense in this world of big banking, don’t take the first no as a answer.

On my next blog I will be talking about auto loans and auto purchasing.