So, I get this notice from one of my credit card companies. It’s the usual, “we’re changing the terms, blah, blah, blah,” type things, which people I guess usually just toss since it’s typically written in a lot of legalese. I decide to peruse the thing, see if there’s anything that pops out, and lo and behold, in the middle of the first page:

Your APR for [pretty much everything] is chaning to a corresponding ANNUAL PERCENTAGE RATE of 24.99% (Daily Periodic Rate (DPR) of 0.068465%).

We increased your APR due to the balances and APRs on this account.

Exsqueeze me?!?! I always pay off this account every month, there’s never a balance on it. The ‘new’ rate is almost 1.5 times more than the current (10.99%), not that any rate matters much since I always pay it off, but yeah, no, I don’t think so. I guess I don’t make them enough money as it is, so they want to squeeze more blood out of this stone.

Further down there’s a procedure to ‘reject’ the change, which involves writing to them, they won’t take just calling them (which has, of course, always worked in the past – to call and object and get any interest rate changes reversed or lowered below the current). I guess I’ll be sending a letter next week. If they up the rate, that’s the end of using this card, rewards or no. I won’t close the account as it’s my oldest credit account, but I certainly won’t give them any more business.

I guess the point of this is that it pays to read those standard notices (financially, at least – I won’t mention what it’s done to my blood pressure today).

Closed one card in its entirety today, lowered the interest rate on one of the remaining ones, and removed a third one from my wallet.

I called the large servicer of my two main cards to dump the low-limit ($700) bank-I’m-not-with-any-more visa I had with them. Since I no longer have an account at said bank, it’s not needed for overdraft protection, and I don’t have particularly fond memories of the bank anyway, so Die, Die, Die. It was my oldest credit card, which is supposedly worth keeping on the report, but screw it, I was simply ready (emotionally) to get rid of the thing. It had been the little credit card I started with, waaaay back under a previous bank, and it had been one of the most reasonable ones for making payments and interest rates and what not, but as soon as previous and not-with-any-more merged, not-with-any-more farmed out their card serving to the large servicer instead of handling it in-house, and the servicer promptly jacked up the interest rate on the card. Jerks.

They did get rid of the card, but in a sneaky way. The servicer merged the credit limit into the other visa I have with them (upping it by the aforementioned $700), and somehow merged the accounts so that the remaining visa now looks like it’s the old one, to keep the “cardholder since” longevity. Whatever. So long as a card died today, I’m happy. The old one is now tacked to my bulletin board, along with the other ones I’ve paid off.

Oh, and the servicer was so happy with me for completely paying off the cards that they lowered the interest rate on the remaining card to their lowest available one. One that is less than half what I had on the card a year ago, and is actually lower than the original rate I’d had waaay back when under the previous bank. Wunderbar.

DiscoverCard™, on the other hand, did not want to play when I called about an interest rate deduction. Instead of processing a rate reduction over the phone, as they’ve done the past 3-4 times I’ve talked to them., they’re sending me paperwork to fill out (!!!!!) to request a rate decrease from the current one, which is also now somehow a floating prime+ rate instead of the fixed rate I’ve always had with them. So that got the card removed from the wallet so it won’t be used. Don’t want to play nice, I don’t have to give you any business – no transaction fees for you! Meh. Not like their “cash back” rates are any good anyway, unless you’re participating in one of their specials. AmEx has better return rates (on paper, at least).

And at this point, it’s “who can give me the most for giving them the business” when it comes to cards. I’m going to try AmEx once their new card arrives and see how I like them. I’ve heard very good things about them, and I like the options available on their web site (payments can be made every 2-3 days, not every 8 [!!!], nor do you have to “schedule” payments several days in advance before they credit to the account), so we’ll see how that works. No more carry-over balances for this man, that’s for sure.

Is much happier to be in this position than the one I was in a year ago, owing out the whazoo and begging for rate reductions to get rid of balances faster, and not seeing any end in site to the debt. I still have a good chunk of debt (student loans – oy!), but there’s an end in sight, and I’m in a much better position to actually be able to plan for things like, say, buying a place of my own now, rather than simply spending all my money and psychic energy dealing with existing debt. Definitely a happier place to be.

Equifax seems to have finally realized that I am, in fact, Moose II and not Moose, Sr., nor Moose III. I can’t get to the actual file yet – they’ve not yet combined the two – but I did go over the credit accounts in the duplicate account in my name and they were all mine. So now I wait another week and call back to try to weasel them out of get an updated, corrected credit report from them. Finally all three bureas should be up to date and happy now, which makes for a very happy Moose.

Speaking of happy Moose, it’s the solstice, meaning days can get longer once more and I can get more sunlight. More sunlight = happy Moose. I don’t do well in all-dark, and would probably be a total mess if I had to live somewhere near or above the artic circle. Give me warmth and sunlight (and yes, even humidity) any day of the week over this cold, dark crap we lovingly refer to as “winter.”

And on yet another happy Moose note, I have been happily floating through the day on a dose of prescription sudephedrine. Whee! I’m guessing I picked up the cold on the train, as none of my relatives were sick this past weekend (normally there’s one family “assassin” who brings the rest of us the annual holiday cold, but none were in evidence this time). No biggie, it’ll be gone soon enough, but in the meantime I’m nice and mellow (and on legal substances, much to the chagrin of one of the older attorneys here at work who, it seems from his comments, would have preferred me mellow on something more… organic).