Here are a few random items that I have discovered lately:

Lower Interest Rate To Give Up Your Credit Card?   Yes!

The Consumerist is running this story about a woman who is offered a lower interest rate if she agrees to cancel her card.  While The Consumerist gives the woman the correct advice, Take It!, it is simply amazing that anyone would not know to do this.   If I have one philosophy of credit card usage, it is “Never carry a balance and pay interest”.    A close second is that credit cards are a dime a dozen.

Look, there are many merchants that you are almost completely locked in to.   Do you want water or electricity at your house?   You probably have one choice.   Do you want to watch HBO or the Discovery Channel?  Maybe you have two or even three choices.  Do you want to fly non-stop from a large city to a small one?    You might be lucky to have one choice.

When it comes to credit cards, we have it somewhat lucky.    Never forget that you have thousands of choices.    While the deal offered wasn’t as good as that offer from American Express where they pay you to close your account, it is still a very good deal.    The cardholder is having her rate reduced from  loan shark-like 28% to a downright reasonable 6% as part of their bank’s hardship program.

Another lesson here is to add another item to the “Secret Menu”.   If you are paying interest on your credit card, always call up and ask if you can get a lower interest rate.     If you don’t get the answer you are looking for, be sure to ask if they have a hardship program.

Novelty Rewards

Switching gears back to reward cards now.   Just when you think that you have seen every reward card there is, you are confronted with others.    Case in point, I had an interesting trip last weekend where I had the opportunity to see the Milwaukee Brewers play the former Milwaukee Braves who happen to be from Atlanta these days.   Anyways, in the program was an offer for a Milwaukee Brewers reward card.   The gist of the offer was that as a sign up bonus, you received a major league baseball signed by one of the players.

Actually, you only received the ball after a token $75 in purchases.   That will cost you the $1.50 you might have earned if you had a 2% reward card.     On the other hand, as a sign up bonus, it is sorely lacking the bonuses worth I am accustomed to receiving.  For reference, an official major league baseball retails for about $13.

What I found interesting about the offer was that it included a reward with little or no marginal cost to the issuer.    Having some players sign a bunch of baseballs in their spare time is probably something you have to do, especially when you make a minimum of $390,000 a year for playing a child’s game.

In the past, I have speculated that perks that have little or no marginal cost will become increasingly more common.   I am talking about “priority” status in some club, the ability to skip a line, or to get the first opportunity to purchase a new product or a ticket to an event.

The Brewers haven’t gone that far yet, but I did find the signed baseball to be an innovative reward.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 20:00 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.