American Express and Annual Percentage Rates

The math this company uses to weave their web of numbers is amazing. Broken down, when you open your first American Express card, you are automatically assigned an APR based on your credit rating. You tell us your credit is high and you receive a 12.99% variable, too bad. AMEX says you suck. Deal with it, or close the account.

Yes, they do have promotional offers at lower rates … but you need to read everything carefully. ‘As low as 0% offered for some or most card members’. This is where either AMEX wisely gets you, or your stupid and don’t read the sentence. All you see is you’re getting 0%. So you sign up for the card, and the next thing is you got 6.99%. Why? Cause AMEX deemed your credit is that worthy. And you cant fight it. That’s all they offered .. deal with it.

So okay, lets say you already have an AMEX and somewhere around January 2009, your APR went up about 3%. Why? Because in November 2008, they sent out with your statements information that because of the market changes, they were raising the APR’s.

Perfectly legal. It’s quoted in the Terms and Agreement that you didn’t read that AMEX can do this.

But the AMEX crowd never gets that.

They could, conceivably, raise the APR to 80% if they wanted, and you can’t do a thing but cancel the card.

So the fools call in wondering why and we tell them all the same crap as mentioned above and they either want to cancel the card or make it lower.

Here’s what you need to know: if you had 7.99% or so, this is considered a standard rate. Meaning the average rate all card members have. Some have less … some have more .. .but the solid mid-point was 7.99%. So, January 2009, they went up to 10.94 or 12.99%.

Can you get it lowered?

Only the very rare and very few can get it lowered from the standard rate.

Want to know how to get a better rate? Time and current payments is the only way to do the trick … but even then, there is no guarantee. You have to NEVER be late and ALWAYS pay on time.

Here’s what happens when you don’t pay on time …

Lets say you got a card with a promotional rate of 0% for a year. You ring up 5,000 on your card and your not paying any interest. Suddenly, you lose your job and your late with one payment. Only one payment … say by two days. One day is all it takes, but it’s really seen in two days.

You will lose your promotional rate and go to what is called a default rate…usually at a whopping 27.24%

And American express will not tell you.

You see, here’s the truth about American Express. It’s all about silent disclosure. They hide nothing … but they are not obligated to tell you.

So you’re spending and you’re a little late. If you’re not paying attention, you lost your promotional rate, now you’re suddenly paying finance fees commensurate to the balance and you don’t even know why. It could go on for months at 27.24% … and all you have to do is call in and ask for it to be lowered.

That’s right. Ask…if you catch it early enough, we always lower the default rate from 27.24% down to something like 12 or less % depending on how deep the situation is with your payments and credit. Again, system generated. We have choices of one percentage or another and we typically lower it to the lower of the two for you.

Some card members, mostly the elderly and generally stupid card members let it stay at 27.24% for months … and then suddenly we can’t lower it back down at all.

Some card members really get penalized by American Express. This is what you need to know about late payments as well …

It’s July 10th and your payment is due on July 13th. You make your payment either by mail or by phone (I’ll get to that subject in a minute) … we receive and post it on the 14th. It’s late and you WILL receive a finance charge with your late fee.

But wait … it won’t stop there. You will keep receiving a finance charge for the next two billing cycles until your account shows current straight through. So if you were hit with a finance charge of $50 for being late … and you make your payment the next month on time … you will STILL get a finance charge. And the next month after that.

That’s how the system works. System generated … but that’s how it goes.

Sure you can call to have the fee waived … depending on your history with AMEX (not your membership tenure) the CCP may do it. Come off like an asshole, and the CCP will not. That much is up to us. You see, you can call in and ask to have your finance charge waived, and the system may deny you, but we can override it and still waive it for whatever reason.

I tended to waive the fees for people who were straight up and honest about their situations. The people who lost their jobs or simply forgot to mail a payment on time.

It’s the idiots that come off like they want it waived because their an asshole … they got rejected by me every time. So then they want to cancel the card, I cancel it for them … they call back a week later and try to reinstate the card … they can’t do it so they need to reapply for a new card. Suddenly they lost their rate and they have to start from scratch … not to mention pay their balance on the card they cancelled.

There is sooooooooooooooo much more I’m going to share. Got Questions…I’ll tell you all I know.