I heard a really strange story recently from a very credible source. The man said that the CC company jumped on some technical default on his part as an excuse to jack his special low rate up to the stratosphere. He said he called them and told them he had no intention of making any more payments unless they restored his original interest rate, he owed around five thousand dollars. They threatened to ruin his credit, he replied that he didn’t care. He is very financially solid and could have paid the whole thing off at once but he told them he didn’t think their little piddling debt would hurt his credit standing very much but if they would restore his rate he would make his payments. They flat refused but called him back and said that if he would pay something like forty percent of the balance they would settle for that. He told them that didn’t make sense for them to lose over half the balance and repeated that he would pay the whole amount but only at his original interest rate. They told him they couldn’t do that so he said “Well, thanks for the gift” and sent them their payoff amount. I am at a loss as to what the thinking was on that one.