Does it ever seem like credit card companies treat their
customers like indentured slaves? The policies that these credit
companies use to handle your accounts are at best unscrupulous
and at worst, down right outrageous. If any other industry tried to
cheat their customers out of money like the credit card companies
successfully do every day of the year, they would be investigated
and jailed with a vengeance. But our government doesn’t do that
so the credit card companies literally have a license to steal.

The way these companies handle your accounts has a lot to do
with why your credit card debt is so hard to get rid of. When you
owe a few thousand dollars to a credit card company and they are
constantly slapping you with fees, they jack up your interest rates
and add charges to your account for “membership dues” and other
bogus things, it becomes clear that in addition to the debt, the
debt carriers are not your friend when it comes to reducing your
debt.

Did you know that you can put them on notice and make them
march to your tune, but to do that you are going to have to take
charge and be the boss. Let’s say you get dozens of credit card
offers and perhaps have several credit card accounts already
open, you may have the flexibility to put the credit card companies
on notice and let them know that is time they serve you as a
customer instead of you serving them.

To make these big companies stand up and take notice of you,
they have to know that they can be fired. To prepare for battle you
must first make sure you know what they are up to. To do this you
will need a year’s worth of statements so that you can track the
extra fees, the membership dues and make note of each time they
have raised up their interest rates on your account.

Then armed with that information, call them and politely demand to
talk to someone (a supervisor) who can make changes to your
account. If the they don’t want to play ball, tell them to start the
process of closing the account. That will get their attention. You
might have to actually close the account but don’t miss the chance
to make comments when they come to the part of the process
where they ask why you are closing the account.

This is where you get your licks in. You can leave as the reason
something like this. “I am closing the account because you are
imposing unreasonable fees and membership dues and I want the
interest rate dropped to a certain rate and capped.” That will get
some effective attention. You will either get to a manager right
away or one will call you.

Don’t lose your nerve, don’t argue and be prepared to hear a
bunch of lame excuses. They can come up with one after another
because that is what they are trained to do. They can say things
like; they raised your interest rate because you were late on a
payment so this is a penalty.

A good answer to that would be, “I have no other choice than to
close my account.” As long as you stay strong, there is no
response that they can give other that to work with you on your
terms, because you have a secret weapon that they don’t want you
to know you have and that is that you are a premium customer.

The credit card companies know there are a limited amount of
people who can carry a debt and make the payments. And each
time they lose a customer, that pool of victims, or customers, goes
down. And don’t be fooled by any talk that they have no leverage
to change the rules of the game. They can and they will.

You can even go as far as to demand that they refund all charges
they imposed in the last year. They can insist that you are being
unreasonable all they want. You are well within your rights to
respond with, “It’s unreasonable of you impose fines and fees on
my account without notice and for no additional value added to my
account. Its usury (charging of unreasonable or relatively high
rates of interest) and I am within my rights to close this account
and file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and with the
US Attorney General.”

These aren’t just scare tactics. These are words that credit card
companies live in fear of hearing. So use the tools you have and
put the credit card companies on notice that they are going to
march to your tune or you will take your money elsewhere!

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