Information Center – News and Articles about Credit Cards
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Balance Transfer Fee: How to Waive or Lower It?
If you are determined to eliminate your credit card debts and you have good credit, getting a balance transfer card is a good idea. You can shift your credit card balances with high interest rate to a card with much lower rate or 0% APR at all. But there is one thing that can reduce your profit from this kind of a deal. It is balance transfer fee.
Most balance transfer cards come with a fee for a transfer. Not long ago you could easily find a plastic for balance transfers with no fee. However, due to the credit card market crisis and economy slowdown, lenders have pulled these deals from the market. And now it is rather hard for a customer to find a balance transfer card that comes with no fee. But there are some ways to negotiate a better balance transfer deal.
So, after you chose a low rate card offer for balance transfer with favorable terms, like 0% intro APR on balance transfers or purchases, or maybe both, you are to look at the balance transfer fee. This fee is charged for shifting a credit card balance from one card to another. As a rule, the fee makes up 3% of the money amount you want to transfer.
If you transfer $1,000, paying extra $30 is ok. But if you want to shift $10,000? Would you want to pay a $300 fee just for the transfer? So, how can you get away with minimal losses?
If you are going to transfer a large balance, you should better find an offer with a capped fee. There are balance transfer cards that come with a 3% fee for a transfer, but there is a cap of $75 set. If you have some problems with qualifying for this kind of deal and yours comes with an uncapped balance transfer fee, you can try to negotiate this fee down. Or you can also ask a creditor for a capped fee. Though it might seem something next to impossible, you can succeed, especially if you are a loyal and valuable client.
You can even go further. Try to lower or waive the fee at all. In this case you have fewer chances to get a positive response. However, you lose nothing for asking. If you have good reputation of a loyal, reliable and trustworthy credit card holder with stainless payment history, your credit provider will not want to lose you. Anyway, even if you get denied, you can always apply for a deal from another credit card issuer.
When talking to lenders you are to concentrate all of your communication and persuasion skills. Be persistent but polite. Try to rich your goal, but keep going with the flow of the negotiations. Be flexible. You can ask for waiving the fee first. If you feel that the creditor holds his ground, ask for a cap you find reasonable. In most cases lenders make such concessions.
So, do not be afraid to ask and get rejected. There are so many credit providers that want you to be their client. Who dares wins. You can literally create the best credit card for you by yourself.
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The XXI century is the century of high-speed and nanotechnologies. It seems people strive to speed up all processes to make this already hectic and sometimes chaotic rhythm of life even crazier. They are ready to shrink everything they can lay hands on to make nanotechnologies work. In fact people just want to make their life more convenient.
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The results leave much to be desired, to put it mildly. The volume of credit card debt with a delay of 30 or more days has gone up by 26% as compared to October, 2007. Now it makes up $17 billion. It stands for over 4% of credit card debts. The information on card holders debts for Associated Press was provided by the leading US companies.
We are used to see credit cards the way they look today, and it is hard to imagine that they looked different and served for another purpose than paying for goods and services. We call them plastics. In fact, a century ago credit cards had a different shape, size and were not made of plastic.
The appearance of credit cards dates back to the beginning of the XX century. Who were they created for? The target audience was wealthy people. The cards could be used as business certificates and licenses for the so-called "loyalty programs" at some restaurants, gas stations and merchants. Those cards, you can be surprised, were made of cardboard.
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Credit bureaus cannot stay indifferent to the problem of credit fraud and identity theft, in particular. Equifax, one of the three US major credit bureaus has introduced a new ID theft protection service. "ID Patrol" is a multifunctional tool that allows protecting customers from identity theft.
