Thread: what happened to all the 0% apr offers

not too long ago they were all over the place. now you're lucky if you can find one that gives you 0% apr for 6 months... and that's only if you have great credit! what happened to all those zero apr offers. are they gone for good or just while we're in a recession?

Yeah it sucks. Remember it use to be EVERY credit card offer had a zero perfect APR along with it no matter what card of credit you had. They're still out there just not as common. Even some of the better cards cut them out. I think they'll come back after we get out of this economic downturn.

What I don't understand is credit cards I have like Citi and Chase send me 0% apr offers in the mail but they're only for a few months. I don't want to do it for just 6 months I want my year long no interest

You got to be careful with 0% offers. I'm on the phone right now with my bank because they just screwed me over. I've been a cardmember for years and finally decided to use one of those 0% balance transfer offers that they'd send in the mail every month. So I call them up and do the balance transfer offer a few weeks ago then when I get my statement in the mail I'm getting charged normal interest 16.24%! I call them up and they say the reason was because I wasn't an "active cardmember" beforehand, meaning I didn't use the card often enough the last 12 months so they say that gives them the right to reverse the 0% offer AFTER I call them up and do it. Is this legal? I did it all over the phone with them and they are the ones that did it for me. How can you give someone an offer, then later go back and cancel it after you've done it for a reason like that?!

I think they should start picking back up. With how cheap money is for creditors to get they should at least be able to give 0% apr balance transfer offers to people with good credit.

Originally Posted by Kino

not too long ago they were all over the place. now you're lucky if you can find one that gives you 0% apr for 6 months... and that's only if you have great credit! what happened to all those zero apr offers. are they gone for good or just while we're in a recession?

There are still quite a few around, I think they just try not to advertise it as much. And, as AnthonyBarone said, they may be a bit sneakier about finding reasons to revoke your promo period.

Are you looking for 0% on purchases or balance transfers?

As far as purchases go, the best right now is Blue from American Express as I believe CreditCardGuru mentioned in another post. American Express Clear also offers 0% APR on purchases, but only for 12 months as opposed to the 15 month promo offered by Blue. Chase also offers 0% with their Platinum Visa, as does Citi with their Platinum Select Mastercard.

It is still possible to find them during a recession.

I like to use this site to see a list of current CC terms and promotional offers. You can sort them by promotional APR on purchases or balance transfers, or by their regular interest rates, or by the length of their promo periods, as well as sorting them by business, personal, or student cards.

Rates are always negotiable from contractual to balance transfers!!!

Just keep in mind, credit card companies are companies meaning we need to satisfy stock holder... reports for stock holder are released on a quarterly bases.

Guess when you're going to have get the best rates? Yup, either in the first 2 weeks or last 2 weeks of the quarter. Reason - when you do BT, you bring a flow of cash into the company... ALSO have you ever wondered why BT are usually 3,6,9,12,15 months??? When these adjust - they will typically sky rocket in interest rates... which means they can cover the "difference" on the "new balance transfers with 0%"...

Bottom Line: Be ready to play hard ball!!!

The relationship to the quarter makes perfect sense, but I never thought of that. Now that I think about it, this year Bank of America was doing their usual 0% offers, but as soon as it was April, they seemed to disappear for a couple months, then came back in full force.

Originally Posted by Cucumber

The relationship to the quarter makes perfect sense, but I never thought of that. Now that I think about it, this year Bank of America was doing their usual 0% offers, but as soon as it was April, they seemed to disappear for a couple months, then came back in full force.

Side note... if you combine the 2nd and the 3rd card issuers in the nation... you will not beat the % of CH that BofA has... this means they set the "standard" for any credit card issuers...

Also, they have tremendous lobbing power... Last year in Nov, on capital hill they had a congressional hearing with all of the 3 major banks CEO including BofA, Chase, & Citi about how "interest rates" are calculated... Chase & Citi changed interest rate calculations policies in Oct of last year (Been a while so dont quote me on this... but they did change the policy before the hearing...)

Then... BofA chairmen, Ken Lewis, convinced congress that they charge a "fair" interest rate (I have an article I'll post later)... I personally believe BofA or ANY credit card companies are LOAN SHARKS!!!... Only time will tell if the so called "credit card bill of rights" will even pass...

Just keep in mind that other credit card companies started to copy BofA dirty tricks on marketing, interest rates allocation for maximum profitability, interest rate campaigns, and etc etc... I'll make a post later

**sorry for this post... crazy day, my thoughts are everywhere today!!!**

Originally Posted by Mogul of Pineapples

Do you mean B of A sets the standards as far as interest rates and balance transfers? I would agree with this for many of the big players like Chase and Citi but you do see a lot of small companies under the radar that consistently offer much better rates than the biggest like B of A. So I would say they set the rate for the mainstream issuers but not the rest of them. Even American Express, which isn't in the top 3 but still big, seems to offer much, much better rates on average than they do.

American Express can offer better rates because when someone swips a credit card with that logo the merchant/vendor must pay a fee to american express as a kick back (bank term: interchange fee). The reason why mom and pop stores only excepts visa or master card is because of the "kick back" fee - mc and visa does not charge as much.

Big banks are trying to sqeeze every little penny out of the credit card side to off set the mortgage writeoffs....