Last week I decided to email my bank about my so called ‘variable’ loan only going up, and never coming down, even though savings and home loan rates have dropped. *cough*StGeorge*cough*
Their home loans go down overnight after (or even in anticipation of) an interest rate drop from the Federal Reserve as do their online savings accounts, yet their personal loans and credit cards have stayed as high as ever.
They had no such hesitation to put them up 5 times in the last year as interest rates went up.
I must have written a decent email, as I had a call from their customer relations area on Friday. This was to thank me for my feedback and advise she was going to have someone look into my situation and see what they could do for me. I didn't think much more of that over the weekend and assumed I wouldn't hear anything.
So it was a pleasant surprise to have just had a call from the person she said would call me and he’s offered me a 1.5% interest rate drop, which will drop my minimum payment by $72 a month. It’s still variable, and if the rate ends up dropping below the new rate I’ll still get those reductions.
I won’t be changing my new payment of $1000 a month, it just means that for no extra effort on my part I’ll be able to pay an extra $864 a year off my loan, plus save at least an additional $300 a year in interest.
It pays to be a squeaky wheel, especially in a competitive banking environment.
Monday, 3 November 2008
Squeaky Wheel Gets Grease!
Posted by Debt Dieter Labels: big wins
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Excellent...it's always worth asking :)
ReplyDeletethats a great result, just goes to show that it worth negotiating with them
ReplyDeleteI never thought we'd be able to get those reductions like people seem to in the US, I'm thrilled to be wrong.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. If you squeak you can get a discount. That's what I do (nicely with honey) when I find it unfair
ReplyDeleteWell done! That's awesome!
ReplyDeleteI just checked out dragon direct after reading your post on ugly debty and it looks really good as you can have more than one linked account, do you think it's better than ING?
ReplyDeleteGood for you! Honestly, the things I've learned about money since I started actually caring about it!
ReplyDeletelouise, I prefer dragon direct as you can have multiple accounts, and even subaccounts if you like, and your money is available immediately via phone or internet banking, but not direct via an ATM, which works for me.
ReplyDeleteThat is a amazing discount. Most of the banks only offer at best, a 0.7% discount, for a "professional" package or loans over $250K.
ReplyDeleteGreat result!