Apparently there’s no way to beat these guys unless you can live your entire life on a cash-only basis.

I got a notice this week that my Capital One card, which has had a 9.9% fixed interest rate for more than 10 years and which I’ve used very prudently to protect the high credit limit I’ve earned, is about to be changed to a 15.9% variable rate card.

A phone call to Cap One confirmed it is not a mistake. If I don’t agree to the change, the notice said, I can cancel my account. (The notice, by the way, was mailed separately from my statement and looked a lot like junk mail. It’s a wonder I saw it at all.)

A little poking around online shows this has happened to a lot of people. I was also reminded that my credit rating will get dinged if I close the account. No doubt if I don’t close it, Cap One will keep hitting me with annual membership fees. (Mind you, this is how they treat a long time customer who always pays on time and has an 800+ credit rating.)

I dug into my file cabinet for my two active but deliberately unused credit cards and pulled out the L.L. Bean Visa with the 9.9% fixed rate. And in a feeble gesture of protest, I rolled my Cap One balance onto the Bean card.

If you read my previous post, you already know the L.L. Bean card is from Bank of America, and I swore I was going to cut it up to protest BoA’s extension of credit to illegals. (I admit it, I wimped out.) The other card, in the time since the account was established eight years ago, had magically morphed into a BoA card (it wasn’t BoA originally). The BoA rep noticed this, promptly combined it with the Bean card, and raised the credit limit quite a bit. So now I’m down one card/account but have a higher overall limit with BoA. Hmmm.

Sigh. Anyone want to bet how long it will be before BoA switches my fixed rate to a much higher variable rate?