Take that Call

Whenever I see a number I don’t recognize on my telephone, I tend not to pick up. For reasons beyond my understanding, I broke that rule the other day. “Yes, can I please speak with Mr. Joseph Belanger?” Oh geez, great. I broke my rule and now I was stuck on the phone with a customer service representative from one of my credit card companies. Was I late on my payment? Was that why they were calling? Or did they want to try to sell me insurance for the hundredth time? Oh, why did I pick up? Why?!? (I ask as I wave my fist in the air.)

As it turns out, the phone call was nowhere near as disastrous as I first thought it might be. The reason my credit card company was calling me was to discuss a limited time offer that I was eligible for as a customer who paid his bill on time regularly. When I was done patting myself on the back for being such an excellent bill payer, I allowed the nice lady to continue explaining her offer.

This credit card company wanted me to transfer the balances from my other credit cards to them for a limited time lower interest rate. Ordinarily, I am extremely skeptical whenever any company offers me something for what seems like nothing but, after thinking this one through, I came to the conclusion that this little arrangement I was being offered was sure to benefit everyone involved … well, except for the credit card companies that were being paid out anyway.

Here is the deal. My credit card company would pay the full balance, or whatever balance I told them, of as many of my other credit cards as I so desired or had space on this card to cover. I didn’t have to do anything other than tell them an amount and confirm my account number. That newly transferred balance would be charged an interest rate of 2.99% for a period of six months. Compare that to the 18% I was paying on it already and you’ve got yourself a great deal. Isn’t the best Canadian credit card company offering such deal?

There is of course a catch but I feel it is still worth it anyway. Naturally, the credit card company isn’t going to do this at no benefit to themselves. First of all, they now have that amount in their court. They assume you won’t pay it off before the six months are up and will then pay the regular interest rate on it at that time. Before the six month mark, any payment you make goes toward the transferred amount first until that amount is paid off. This means that any amount you already had owing on this card would be charged the regular interest rate and would not go down at all as long as you had not paid the transfer amount back in full.

The ends undoubtedly justify the means here. Had I left everything where it was, I would be paying high interest on everything instead of high interest on just some and low interest on everything else. This is not an ultimate solution but will certainly help anyone looking for some temporary relief. And with credit card companies increasing their interest rates in light of recent economic difficulties, you’d best take advantage of balance transfer options before they stop offering them altogether.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my phone is ringing and I have no idea who is calling.

Note about the author:

Joseph Belanger is a Toronto-based writer who blogs about film at www.blacksheepreviews.com

image source: James Cridland