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This post is originally written by consumerist.com. I copy it here because I think it’s useful for you guys to know how to deal with Chase Customer Service Representatives. Remember this might be useful for other bank customer service representatives.

Do you know the one thing to never say to a customer service rep if you’re late on your bill? Do you know how Chase ranks you, and how you’re ranked determines whether they help you out in a bind? Do you know the best way to get what you want from customer service? After you read these 10 confessions from a Chase customer service rep, you will.

“HOW WE RANK CARDMEMBERS

There are 3 levels of cardmembers at Chase. They are segregated as BEST, VALUABLE, or NON-PROFIT.

10. BEST
Cardmembers make up a small minority of the people at Chase. If I talk to 100 people in a day, maybe 5 are best cardmembers. If you’re a Best cardmember, pretty much anything you want to get done. You want a late fee taken off? Done. Don’t feel like paying $200 in finance charges? No problem. How do you achieve Best cardmember status? You either have to move a lot of money through the bank, (we can tell if you have a mortgage, car loan, etc thru Chase), or have a high balance that you’re paying a good amount of interest on. If you generate enough fee revenue from finance charges, say $100 per month, and you want a late fee taken off, no problem, we’ll take $39 off this month to make you happy and make sure that $100 monthly keeps rolling in.

9. VALUABLE

Cardmembers make up the majority of people we talk to. Valuable basically means you pay your bills on time, and are in general a good customer. You can get a fee waived also, but not nearly as often. I don’t mind waiving a late fee for you, but usually only every 6 months. That’s standard, but we can base our judgment on it all the way back to a year. And if I remove a late fee for you, don’t think you’re getting anything waived in the foreseeable future.

8. NON-PROFIT

These are the cardmembers who know what they’re doing. They’re the group of people that pay their bill off, in full, every month, like clockwork. They don’t pay finance charges, and they’re never late. They don’t go over their credit line, they don’t have returned payments, and they earn rewards. Which all amounts to the bank isn’t making any money on your account. So if you get a late fee, you have absolutely zero chance of getting it waived. That late fee is revenue for the bank, and it uses it to offset the maintenance on your account. Maintenance includes your statements mailed to you, sending you replacement cards, dealing with customer service, and cashing out rewards point / miles / dollars. For this cardmember, if you threaten to close your account if we don’t do what you want, don’t be surprised to get an offer to close your account during that phone call. Why? What is the incentive to keep you? I know its pretty cold hearted, but that’s exactly how it works. You do a great job on your account, but you can get punished. Hey, I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.

HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT FROM CUSTOMER SERVICE
7. I WILL GO TO BAT FOR YOU IF YOU TREAT ME LIKE A HUMAN

First and foremost, remember we are people. If you’re the type of person who calls up and rants and rave with a “you better do this or else” attitude, honestly, it’s just going to turn a service rep off. Remember, we talk to a hundred people a day, 5 days a week. It’s a thankless job, and in there somewhere, I’m cursed at, yelled, spoken down to, please God knows what else. Think about it like this….are you more likely to want to help someone treating you like a human being, or someone who is degrading you? It’s only natural.

I’ve waived significant amounts of money off of accounts if I feel its deserved, I’ve reduced APR’s, I’ve contacted credit bureau’s to get your record fixed, I’ve deferred your payment to next month, I’ve done a lot of things. But the one constant, I’ve only done this for people who have been pleasant with me on the phone, and in layman’s terms, haven’t been a douchebag.

6. STATE WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE DONE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CALL

I understand its human nature to explain why you’re payment showed up late, how you’re a good customer, this has never happened before, etc, but if you just tell me you want a late fee waived, I’ll immediately look at the account and decide if you’re eligible. To us, it doesn’t matter if you forgot to mail the check, were on vacation, your boss didn’t pay you, bottom line, you want a late fee waived, I’m gonna judge you on our ratings system and check to make sure you haven’t had other fees waived recently.

5. YOU ARE NOT A UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE

I’ve taken thousands of calls, and I’ve encountered every possible situation. The earlier you tell me what you would like your end result to be, the earlier you can get your matter resolved. Screaming at me does you know good, and honestly, makes me want to help you less.

I have a post about how th banks rank their customers. You might also want to check it out here.

We are reluctant to see that oil hit $100 a barrel Wednesday and gasoline prices could soon top their all-time record from last May of $3.22 a gallon. Considering the oil prices are still rocketing high, it’s necessary to get a nice gas card to save more on gasoline. Here are some recommendations for your reference. All of them are annual fee-free.

American Express SimplyCash^SM Business Card (★★★★★) You can absolutely get 5% cash back at all of the gas pumps without any limit. The cash back will be credited to your account every month. You don’t have to wait until you get enough rewards amount. Plus you can get 5% cash back at office supplies and wireless services. This is a business card. The usage of this card will not report on your personal account.

Citi Driver’s Edge Options Platinum Select MasterCard (★★★★★) You can get 6% cash back at gas stations, supermarkets and drugstores in 12 months. This is why I give this card five stars. I’m pretty sure that you can save a lot by using this card in the first year. Another feature is you can get $1 for every 100 miles you drive. You can convert the cash rebate to ThankYou Points at any time.

Discover® Open Road^SM Card (★★★★☆) You can get 5% cash back at all of the gas stations with your first $100 every month. If you spend $150 every month on gasoline, you can get 5% cash back on the first $100 and 0.5% from the remaining $50. If your monthly gasoline consumption is less than $100, this would be a nice card for you.

Chase BP Visa® Rewards Card (★★★★☆) You can get 10% cash back for any gasoline purchases made at BP gas stations in the first 2 months. And after that, you can continue to get 5% cash back at any BP gas station. If there are many BP gas stations in your area, this is a nice card for you. Another reason why I recommend this card is you can easily get this card from Chase. The drawback is you can only get 5% cash back at BP gas stations.

Shell® MasterCard from Citi (★★★★☆) You can get 5% cash back for any gasoline purchases made at Shell gas stations without limit. The drawback is you can only get 5% cash back at Shell gas stations.

TrueEarnings® Business card from Costco and American Express (★★★★☆) You can get 5% for purchases of automobile gas (effective December 01, 2007, any individual Purchase transaction in excess of 75 gallons or equivalent dollar value will not be deemed to be a Purchase of automobile gasoline) at Costco Gasoline and domestic stand-alone gas stations, excluding gas purchased at warehouse clubs other than Costco, superstores or supermarkets. For example, if you fill your tank at Wal-Mart gas stations, you can’t get 5% cash back. But you can get 5% cash back at BP or Shell gas stations. You can get 3% cash back at restaurants and 2% cash back for traveling.

Chase PerfectCard™ MasterCard® (★★★☆☆) You can get 6% cash back on gasoline purchases for the first 90 days. After that you can only get 3% cash back.

Of course, there are many other store branded gas cards like CITGO, ExxonMobil and Phillips66 card from many credit card issuers. You can find out more at their websites.

My post about redeeming ThankYou Points for an airline ticket to Europe or Asia turned out to be one of the most popular posts in this blog. If you can earn enough ThankYou Points from Citi, it’s really a nice plan. Anyway, if we assume that a ticket to Asia or Europe is about $1,000 and you have 60,000 points to redeem a ticket, your earning for using Citi credit card is actually 1.6 point per dollar spent. If you are using Citi mtvU card for college students, your reward will be 5*1.6=8 points for making purchases at restaurants and Amazon.Com.

Another way to get a free airline ticket would be using airline credit card such as AAdvantage Card issued by Citi and United Mileage Plus Card issued by Chase. Today I’m going to briefly introduce how to get enough AAdvantage miles to redeem for an airline ticket.

At Citicards.com, you can only get 20,000 AAdvantage miles for a new AAdvantage credit card. However, Citi sent me two flyers this month both of which will let you get 25,000 AAdvantage miles for a new AAdvantage credit card. That’s 5,000 miles more. The application website is www.away6.citicard.com and www.fly9.citicards.com. Phone number is 800-829-7535 or 800-871-7639. I don’t know why they have two different addresses, but they are actually the same. This offer expires on May 31, 2008. Trust me you’re not going to get two AAdvantage consumer cards, although you have many choices. Another way is to apply for a business card at Citicards.com which will give you 25,000 AAdvantage miles. Ok, you might have 50,000 AAdvantage miles from Citicards. According to AA, 50,000 miles are enough for an economy class ticket to Europe or Asia at off-peak season. (see the detailed requirement)

There are also many other ways to earn AAdvantage miles.

Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express is offering 10,000 bonus points right now. The 10,000 points can be transferred to AAdvantage miles on a 1:1 basis plus 25% bonus miles, that is, 12,500 AAdvantage miles for signing up this card.

Fidelity is offering AAdvantage miles for opening a new non retirement brokerage account. If you deposit $2,500 in the new account, you will get 5,000 miles. If you deposit $10,000, you will get 15,000 miles. If you deposit $50,000, you will get 25,000 miles.

The above mentioned methods are the easiest and quickest ways to earn a huge amount of AAdvantage miles. I believe if you collect all the miles from above mentioned sources, you can get enough AAdvantage miles which are redeemable for a ticket to Europe or Asia.

Ok. The next job is to manage your credit card account. You should be careful that if you miss one payment, your default APR will be applied. In another way, you lose the promotional 0% APR offer if you miss one payment.

You have to pay the credit card minimum payment on time every month. Basically, you can do this either by pushing the money via check or online billpay to credit card account, or by having credit card account pull money from your bank account.

Usually what people do is to send the credit card issuer a check once you receive the monthly bill. It’s OK in most instances.

Another way is to use your online billpay at your bank account. Believe this is a very basic service that any bank should provide. It’s free and must be free. The process is very simple. You have to add a payee in your bank account, enter the address of the payee and then put your account number there. Once you finish the registration process, you are ready to go. Every month you can simply add the amount you need to pay, and then schedule the payment date. The bank will handle everything for you. This is what I’m doing right now. You can also use the repeating/recurring payment service from your bank. I know Chase and National City bank offer such kind of service. You just have to set a scheduled amount at the very beginning, and then the bank will send a payment to the payee every month. Since the first minimum payment will be largest minimum payment, you can send a same amount for the following months. You are all set! (I strongly recommend using the repeating/recurring payment service.)

You can also pay the minimum balance from your credit card account. You can set up your payment method online. And then connect a bank account to your credit card account. In this way, you can schedule a payment online.

Anyway, current financial services are much better than before. Please make sure you won’t miss a payment.

The purpose of this series is to let you know how to make money by taking advantage of balance transfer offers. I can foresee that the balance transfer offers without any charges will be no longer available soon. If you want to take a try, please hurry up.

OK, this is the third post about making money off of other people’s money. Sure, we are still getting $100 or more for sign-up bonus. That’s the easiest way to earn money from banks, and we are all doing this. However, by taking advantage of balance transfer, you can make more, just more, from a single credit card.

The previous post is about how to distinguish whether a credit card provides good balance transfer offer. A good balance transfer offer should have three major features:

1). 0% APR Balance transfer length should be longer than 9 months;

2). 0 balance transfer fee is best. However, due to the reported loss of most major US banks, we seldom see 0 fees offers these days. Usually they will charge 3% of your transferred balance, and some are with capped amount like $75 or $99. You should read carefully with the terms & conditions. Usually $75 is acceptable. (Bank of America is charging 3% with unlimited caps.)

3). 0 annual fees, at least first year should be free.

Hare are some cards I would recommend if you want to have a try. (Maybe you will receive good balance transfer offers from credit card issuers. Those targeted offers are not considered here.)

Discover More Card

Miles Card by Discover

Citi Professional Cash Card

Citi Professional Card with ThankYou Network

Citi Professional Card (0% APR on purchase)

Citi Upromise Platinum Select MasterCard

Chase offers some 0% APR for 6 months with capped $99 fee. Personally, I don’t think is a good deal. If you need cash immediately, you can find more at Chase.Com.

Application process: All you have to do is to find out your favorite card and then submit application as usual. Maybe they will ask you whether transfer balance to another credit card. If you don’t know how to do this, you can leave it blank. You can do this later on in your online account. Or, if you do know how to use another card to do balance transfer, you can put an amount there. They won’t reject your application for asking too much. For example, if you ask to transfer $20,000 to another card and the issued credit limit is only $10,000, the card issuer will transfer the balance according to you credit limit.

Once your application is approved, what should you do next?

The answer is how to transfer the available credit to your high rate saving or CD accounts.

Most credit card issuers will send you some checks with new card. Or Citi will even allow you to get a balance transfer check online! However, you should read carefully with the associated checks. Cash advance? You can also call the card issuer to confirm what you can do with the checks. I can deposit the checks from WaMu directly to my checking account with the checks received along with my new WaMu card. I call them up and confirmed that I can do this. I also wrote down the ID of the customer service representative.

Another way to do balance transfer is to transfer the balance to another credit card (This card doesn’t have to carry balance.). For example, you have new card A with balance transfer offer, and another card B. You can request to transfer balance from A to B. Once your request gets approved, you can see the balance on card B is negative. Then just go ahead and request a balance refund check from card B. You can deposit the check to you personal account. Again, Citi is most friendly with credit refund!

I have a special page about high rate saving accounts. You may check out there to find one for you to earn free money.

Ok. If you are not categorized as one of four types of people, you are ready to proceed to prepare for playing the balance transfer game. Here are some definitions:

Balance transfer is the act of transferring debt from one credit card to another assuming the newer card has better terms and rates. According to the definition, you can only do balance transfer between credit card accounts. However, there are many direct and indirect ways to put money into your saving/CD account. So, technically, you can use balance transfer to get cash.

Cash advance is a cash loan drawn from the available credit of your credit card account. (You can get cash from an ATM or cash advance check sent by the credit card issuer.) Usually there is no grace period for cash advances. Interest accrues daily until the complete balance is paid in full. Transaction fees may apply.

Double Billing also known as two-cycle billing. Finance charges are calculated on the balance you hold over the two previous months, rather than on the average daily balance for one month.

Finance Charge is interest and other fees applied against purchases, balance transfers and cash advances. Unless the issuer has a grace period, finance charges are accrued until the credit card debt is paid off.

Minimum Payment is, to not default, the minimum amount the cardholder is required to pay.

It’s important to remember the definitions of the above terms as you need to read carefully about the fine print of your credit card agreement. Once you submit your application, you’re supposed to accept the terms and conditions issued by the bank. All the information you need to evaluate the balance transfer offers can be found at terms and conditions.

Let’s take a look at the perfect Citi professional card. You can find the following features in the terms and conditions:

Annual fees: none

APR for purchases: 13.24% variable

Balance transfer APR: As long as balance transfers are completed within 9 months from date of account opening, 0.00% for 9 months from date of first balance transfer. After that same as for purchases.

Cash advance APR: 22.24% variable.

Default APR: 31.24% variable.

Balance transfer fee: 3% of each balance transfer; $5 minimum, $50 maximum. There is no fee with the 0.00% APR balance transfer offer described above.

You can see the screenshot:

This card is currently offering $15,000 ThankYou Points after first purchase. Meanwhile this card is also offering 0% APR on balance transfer for 9 months without any balance transfer fees. Can you imagine how much you can get from this card by combining sign-up bonus and earning from balance transfer?

All major US banks are reporting loss this year. Most banks are not offering 0 fee balance transfer offers. For example, Bank of America is charging 3% balance transfer fees for all balance transfer requests without limit! It’s really hard to find out balance transfer deals these days. My next post is to list the best balance transfer cards.

I believe most of us have got the letter regarding a class-action lawsuit claiming that ” Visa, MasterCard, their member banks, and Diners Club, conspired to set and conceal markups and fees, typically 1-3%, on foreign transaction.” and “those persons who made a foreign transaction using a Visa-, MasterCard-, or Diners Club- branded credit, charge or debit card between February 1, 1996 and November 8, 2006 are members of the Settlement Damages Class.”

If you have made transactions outside the U.S. between Feb. 1, 1996 and Nov. 8, 2006,you are eligible to get the refund. You need to complete and submit a claim form prior to the deadline, either on-line at www.ccfsettlement.com/claim, or by mailing or faxing in the form. There are some options about the refund.

1. Easy refund of $25 which is recommended if you travel outside of the U.S. for less than one week or had foreign transactions of less than $2,500 using your eligible cards during the class period.

2. Total Estimation Refund which is based on typical spending during travel and answers to the few questions listed on the claim form. This option is recommended if you traveled outside the U. S. for more than one week or had foreign transactions of more than $2,500.

3. Annual Estimated Refund which is based on the information you provided and is recommended if you had extensive foreign travel and foreign transactions.

If you want to get the refund charged by the above mentioned credit card networks, you can fill in the claim form online and wait for the result. For more detailed information, you can refer to the official FAQs.

I have lots of emails in my inbox about how to take advantage of the 0% APR on balance transfer from their new credit cards. Some are really curious about how to make extra money from 0% APR balance transfer. Here I will start to write a series of posts about how to make extra money by taking advantage of the 0% APR balance transfer offers from credit card issuers.

I believe most of us have already known how to get sign-up bonuses, how to maximum your cash back/rewards by selectively and wisely use your credit cards combination. However, some of us may be not familiar with the balance transfer and not know how to earn money from it. My post “Earn free Money from Citi” turned out to be one of the most popular posts in this blog. I don’t have enough time to reply each email. Instead, I’d like to write some more detailed stories about balance transfer.

Why do the credit card issuers give you 0% APR balance transfer offers? Of course, their purpose is not to let you earn interest from high rate saving accounts or CDs. As a matter of fact, they want you to pay down debts with high interest rates-auto loans, credit card balances, personal loans, payday loans and home-equity loans. Usually the 0% APR is time limited. For example, most of 0% APR offers will expire in 12 months. After that, if you can’t pay off all your balance on that card, you have to pay the regular interest rate (usually between 14% and 20%). This is an evil tactics used by credit card issuers. They want you to use the 0% APR offer; meanwhile they hope you can’t pay off the balance before the due date.

However, what if you don’t have any debt? Well, you can get extra money from high interest rate saving accounts or CDs by transferring your balance to those accounts. If you can take $10,000 from your credit card, you will end up with $10,500 after 12 months, and then put $10,000 back to your credit card account. It’s radically simple! You’re using one bank’s money to earn money from another bank. You don’t need to use one penny of your own money.

As I mentioned above, you have to pay regular interest if you can’t pay off the balance in time. The credit card issuers aren’t stupid. They are high profitable institutes. They know how to earn profits from their customers. You can’t be too careful about playing money games with them. People with the following

People always forget to pay bills.

It’s very simple. If you can’t pay bills in time, credit card companies will charge late fees and will also terminate the 0% APR offer. You have to pay regular rate. If your late payment exceeds 30 dates, your credit report will get hit by a late payment. Sometime, other banks will also close the accounts without notifying you first.

People need to use credit soon.

If you’re preparing for a mortgage, car loan or other kinds of loans, you’d better don’t play the game. A huge balance on your credit report will definitely lower your credit score. In this case, you can’t get a good rate for your new mortgage or loan. Or maybe you can’t get a loan. Please also remember that even you have paid off your balance, you have to wait for a bout 2 months until the payment appears on our credit report.

People have bad credit and limited credit history.

Of course, if you can’t get a good credit score, you can’t get a good offer from credit card companies. And you can’t get a high credit limit to maximum your earning.

People carry balance regularly.

If you carry credit card balance regularly, you might be not able to pay off the credit card balance before due date. If this is real, you have to pay tons of money. For example, $10,000 will generate more than $1,000 interest with regular interest rate. If you need cash immediately, you can find other financial products. Borrow money from credit card companies is a not wise decision.