Credit card rates
Why do credit card companies sometimes unilaterally offer a lower interest rate? This happened to me today, and I've sometimes heard stories about it from other people, too. There is a customer service script triggered by some kind of inscrutable database condition that causes the customer service agent to lower your interest rate for no apparent reason.
My theory is that they are afraid of losing customers to other lenders' refinancing and balance-transfer deals, perhaps when research indicates that a particular demographic will be particularly tempted by a particular lender's program, and so they try to pre-empt it by partially undercutting the other lender's offer, and so retain customers. Is there any other reason for this?
