Anonymous
10-10-2002, 08:23 AM
Like everyone else in this forum, I'm in debt and need some help/advice/direction so I can avoid filing chapter 7 or 13. I don't want to ruin my credit, so I'm here seeing what my options are.
I have three credit cards, and recently I've been paying on the one charging the highest amount of interest (amount-wise). After paying off a couple of thousand on this account and making sure all my payments have been on time for the last several months, I thought I might be able to take out a personal line of credit so I could consolidate my debt at a lower interest rate and pay off the principle faster.
According to Trans Union's report, I have a score of 743, which doesn't look bad from what I've seen. What didn't look good was information four years old saying I had late payments, and two years ago, I went 60 days while unemployed.
I went to the bank, explained my situation, and said I wanted to give them the business and that I had a few dings in my credit report. I felt somewhat confident I'd get the line of credit because my score had been 634 a few months prior, so I knew I had done a lot to increase it (and I had sent out dispute letters with the credit reporting agencies a month prior to applying). They denied my request on the grounds I have too much unsecured credit.
The rejection left me back in the same place as I was before....paying through the nose on the interest rates (14/22/23%) which makes it super hard to make real debt reduction progress. I called the companies trying to get them to reduce the rates, but all I got was a one percent reduction. Big whoop. They said it was because I had late payments during the year, although they did appreciate me making double payments during the last several months.
Does anyone know of tricks to get the credit card companies to come down on high interest rates? Before I ran into trouble, they were much lower....16/17%, and the rate increases, as we know, get hiked through the roof when you pay late or when you miss a payment.
Help!..... :confused:
I have three credit cards, and recently I've been paying on the one charging the highest amount of interest (amount-wise). After paying off a couple of thousand on this account and making sure all my payments have been on time for the last several months, I thought I might be able to take out a personal line of credit so I could consolidate my debt at a lower interest rate and pay off the principle faster.
According to Trans Union's report, I have a score of 743, which doesn't look bad from what I've seen. What didn't look good was information four years old saying I had late payments, and two years ago, I went 60 days while unemployed.
I went to the bank, explained my situation, and said I wanted to give them the business and that I had a few dings in my credit report. I felt somewhat confident I'd get the line of credit because my score had been 634 a few months prior, so I knew I had done a lot to increase it (and I had sent out dispute letters with the credit reporting agencies a month prior to applying). They denied my request on the grounds I have too much unsecured credit.
The rejection left me back in the same place as I was before....paying through the nose on the interest rates (14/22/23%) which makes it super hard to make real debt reduction progress. I called the companies trying to get them to reduce the rates, but all I got was a one percent reduction. Big whoop. They said it was because I had late payments during the year, although they did appreciate me making double payments during the last several months.
Does anyone know of tricks to get the credit card companies to come down on high interest rates? Before I ran into trouble, they were much lower....16/17%, and the rate increases, as we know, get hiked through the roof when you pay late or when you miss a payment.
Help!..... :confused: