But one day after my rant about Capital One popping my interest rate up to 17.9%, I mysteriously get a letter from them. Now that’s fast. Coincidence?

Of course they’ve seen the error of their ways and are actually going to reverse my interest rates – my money market will now be at 17.9% and my credit card rate will be 1.51%.

File that under wishful thinking.

But they have an offer I can’t refuse.

Quote: You want a low rate? Say no more. We know you want to save money and make your life easier.

I can transfer all my high interest rates to my Capital One account and pay NO interest for 12 months. The kicker of course is that after that, my “everday interest rate” applies. And that’s a friggin 17.9%. How does Capital One define “high interest rate?” And if you  read some more of that fine print, you’ll see any payments you make will first go to existing charges.

In other words, you’re not paying any of that transfer back until all your other charges are paid off. And that’s a sucker deal.

It’s sad the number of people who fall for these gimmicks. Unfortunately, it often becomes a game of shifting balances from one credit card offer to another. Eventually, there are no more cards, no more offers and you are flat out stuck paying these absurd rates.

Apparently not. Because of the economic situation, a review of my account, blah, blah, blah, they are raising my interest rate again – third time in about two years. I had a 7.9 % rate, which isn’t all bad. That was increased to 12.9% a while back. I called on that one and was told it had nothing to do with me, just those “bad people” who don’t pay their bills.

And that should impact me because …? Anyway, the latest notice says my rate is now going up to 17.9%. I am simply at a  loss. I have a near perfect credit rating. My wife and I have made a very serious effort to get out of debt. Barring our mortgage, we’ve succeeded.

We don’t have any credit card debt – oh wait. Maybe that’s it. Since I don’t pay the credit card companies mountains of interest anymore, they reward me by more than doubling my rate in two years.

Gee thanks.

Here’s the kicker. This, as of yet unnamed credit card company, is where I have my “high yield” money market and savings accounts. I say “high yield” because those two accounts COMBINED have an interest rate of less than 5%. And, I have enough money in both accounts to get their highest rate.

How can a ”high yield” interest rate be less than two percent?  I am simply missing the  logic. My money market and savings account rates continue to go down, yet my credit card interest rate continues to go up.

It’s like they’re sitting around some conference table smoking something and Bob goes, “hey, let’s raise this guy’s credit rate and let’s lower his savings rate. Won’t that be a kick in the pants.”

Yeah, thanks.

You know Capital One (oops, did I say Capital One?), you should really get rid of the “high yield” part. How about “we’re shooting to go as low as dirt” money market account.

Must be a nice line of work if you can get it.