Why make credit card customers go through the hassle of asking for fee waivers
Given that credit card fee waiver requests are almost always granted, why do banks make their customers go through such an unnecessary process? Isn’t it an unproductive use of the banks’ resources too?
Credit card companies charge customers an annual fee for the cards. Yet by default, because of keen competition, they also tell customers that they can obtain a waiver of the fees by calling a service hotline or going to their website.
While some credit cards peg their annual fees to generous reward or cashback schemes and are thus more strict with their waiver policies, these tend to be the exception rather than the norm.
So given that the fee waiver requests are almost always granted, why do banks make their customers go through such an unnecessary process? Isn’t it an unproductive use of the banks’ resources too?
Credit card companies already get their cut from retailers and merchants on charges made by customers, so clearly, the annual fees are not needed to sustain operations.
While credit card companies also have waivers for late payment or interest charges, these charges are justified to ensure timely payments. The waivers of such penalties are therefore also conditional on a customer’s payment history.
But in the case of annual fees, surely it makes more sense for the banks to simply abolish them, since the banks know very well that customers will cancel the cards if the waivers are not granted.
