Acambras got her Citibank APR dropped from 13.99% to 2.99% just by asking.

Oh, and threatening to leave.

While we’ve heard this one before, we think the way she went about it is pretty classy.

Her letter, inside.

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Acambras writes:

“So I’m on the phone with Citibank last night. I wanted to find out exactly what my interest rate was on my Citi Mastercard, but didn’t have a current statement available and the website was asking for a scary amount of information. So I go through the rigmarole of calling, entering my account number, telling the CSR my account number, verifying my identity, etc.

She told me my rate was 13.99%. I mentioned that was the highest rate on any of my credit cards and asked if I could qualify for anything lower. She said no, but that I could try back in a month or so.

I thanked her for her time and began to wrap up the conversation (very politely) something along the lines of this:

“Well, you can probably see on my account activity that I’m no longer charging any purchases to my Citibank card, and that in fact I’ve transferred some of the balance to other, lower interest cards. There are plenty of offers out there for much better deals, so don’t be surprised when you see my Citibank balance get transferred elsewhere.”

And presto! She quickly transfers me (to a “retention specialist,” I suspect, although she never used that term). “Travis” bumped my rate down to 3.99% (on the current balance and future purchases) for the next 9 months. Sure, I would have liked more than 9 months, or less than 2.99%, but this wasn’t a bad deal for less than 10 minutes on the phone (plus about 5 minutes of hold time).

The moral to this story: IT NEVER HURTS TO ASK. In fact, I think I’ll call the other credit card companies tonight.”

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