Donald writes:

First and foremost i would like to thank you for the wonderful site. The information found here has been extremely useful. With that said i just want to share with you a success story i had with getting Bank Of America to lower the interest rate on my Apple GoldReserve Line of Credit. This story does not start out so nicely though.

When my Apple loan was bought from MBNA by Bank Of America i was at the time a little less financially responsible and was not making payments like i should have been which jacked my interest rate up to 26.99%. The amount owed on the loan was like $1800. I finally got my other finances in order and decided to attack this loan and get it paid off. So around July i set up auto payments to take out $100 every two weeks (payday to be exact that way it came out before i had the chance to spend it). In December i called in to see if i could get my interest rate lowered and the very nice CSR told me that they see i have been making payments and thanked me for doing so but there is nothing they can do until this trend lasts for 6 months. She told me to call back at the end of January and someone would be able to help me out with that. I was quite happy to hear this and waited until the end of January.

This is where the story gets frustrating.

On Monday I called in again trying to get my interest rate lowered only to find that no one wanted to help me. I was passed around to 4 different CSR’s who didn’t seem to want to do any work that day since their title when the answered the phone were all the same. The first two people told me that they don’t change an interest rate unless 12 months had gone by. When i told them that i was told by a CSR in December to call at the end of January because it would only take 6 months they passed me on. The third guy immediately passed me on as soon as i said lower my interest rate. Didn’t even ask for any of my information. The last person i ended up with was rather rude to me. Here is how the conversation went.

CSR: How are you today
ME: Good if you dont pass me off to someone else.
CSR: What can i help you with?
ME: I would like to see if i can get my interest rate lowered.
CSR: *asked questions about my account info*
ME: As you can see i have been making my payments on time for the last 6 months and way above the minimum payment is there anything you can do?
CSR: Let me check…. No this account is locked. We can not change it.
ME: Locked? If you can not lower it how come you can raise it? That doesnt make sense

note: i know why it was raised it was the year of on again off again payments leading up to these 6 months

CSR: That is our policy. (or something to that effect i dont remember exactly)
ME: So there is nothing you can do?
CSR: No. This account is locked and i can not lower the rate. No one can lower the rate on this account because it is locked.
ME: No one? I find that hard to believe.
CSR: thats right. Nobody can change this interest rate. Is there anything else i can help you with?
ME: No thank you.

and i hung up the phone.

I immediately came here and did a search for Bank Of America email addresses and sent an e-mail off to Maryellen Baker, the Service & Fulfillment Operations Executive. It turned out that she was not the one i wanted to send my email to. But she responded by saying that she was passing it on to someone who can help me with that. That was on wed. Yesterday i received a call from a lady whose name i can not remember. She apologized for the rudeness and said that she looked into the matter and that with my recent payments and over all credit history she would be able to lower my interest rate down to a flat 15%.

Thank you again for this site. Without it a lot of people would keep taking it in the rear from corp america and have no where to share their stories.

Donald

So Donald had a 26.99% APR, tried to get it reduced through five different reps who all told him different stories, but then he got it lowered after sending an email to someone in a position of power. We love that part, “it’s locked, nobody can change the account. Nobody? Nobody.” As if! I’ve never heard of an account being locked in this way, must be a new feature, or a new lie they’re telling, really hard to tell which. If the first tier people can’t or won’t help you, be like Don and escalate.

(Photo: Spidra Webster)

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