The Case of The Rising Interest Rate That Isn’t

Victory! Proving once again that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, I repeated “Can you help me?” to my bank (the one that was about to raise my interest rates for “nonactivity” in an active checking account), I have prevailed. I was informed by the very same man who first informed me that I’d not followed the rules exactly that indeed they were seeing more activity in my account, therefore, my LOC interest rate stays the same. Yee HAW! In retrospect, they were putting my back against a mighty thin wall as they aren’t the only bank in town where my money can reside.

Okay, the loan condition they thought I’d not met was weak. It said, “Pursuant to Paragraph 12 of the Agreement, you agreed to establish and maintain a business checking account with us during the term of this Agreement which shall be your primary depository account….” Okay, since I did all that, what was the problem? The letter did not state, but the bank dude did, that I obviously didn’t use this account as my primary business account. Uh, yes I did. And yes I still do. I’m just not a mover and a shaker, you know? It goes on to say that if I “fail to establish and maintain” this here account, they’re going to raise my rate by as much as 1 percentage point. The letter was one of those ones that is missing the salutation – you know they’re serious when they omit the salutation and use words like “pursuant” a lot.

So I did what was counter intuitive to how most would handle it – instead of fussing up a storm (oh, I wanted to), I asked for help. It’s one of the rules spelled out in Getting to Yes or Getting Past No (can’t remember which – it’s been a while). The idea is to bring them to your side. The best way I know how is to ask for help. Suddenly, that person has a vested interest in the outcome. We all want to help! We want to be the one who solves the problem! If we accomplish that, we know it’s going to be a good day!

While this situation isn’t indicative of how to ask for help – if they’d fussed too much, I’d have picked up my accounts and gone elsewhere – it does show that sometimes it’s okay to try the gentle approach first. First, mind you. If you get no satisfaction and they’re just not listening, I say get noisy on their arses. (Note–this noisy part doesn’t apply to client interactions. There, you get litigious.)

Have you ever tried this? What works for you?