RBC does have a loyalty rate

Heather and I had it all planned out as we headed to our dreaded mortgage meeting. She's had a lousy week so she was the bad cop. I'm rarely in a bad mood so I was the good cop. Our hope was that together we'd get what we wanted and if not, leave frustrated.

I have to be honest, our last mortgage meeting five years ago did not go well. We had to raise a fuss just to get our lender to match our old rate of 5.23 per cent. We weren't going to go through that again which was why we were more determined than ever walking into today's meeting. I'd gone to other banks, spoke to some people and had some numbers to throw at RBC if it came to that. If somebody had asked us where we were going I would have answered in my best William Wallace imitation, 'I'm going to peck a fight.'

So you could imagine my surprise when our lender, Kelly Cooper, opened up our file and told us she could do better than our current rate. Without missing a beat she gave us the best posted fixed rate RBC had today, 4.14 per cent. That was exactly the number the other banks had been offering to lure our business away from RBC. And this was without us saying a single word. I looked at Heather, she looked at me and we both started to relax.

During the subsequent conversation Kelly mentioned "good customers" and "loyalty" more than once which  got me thinking, "did she read my last blog?" Maybe she did, I don't know. What I do know though was that Heather didn't have to pull her bad cop routine to garner us a lower rate. We were getting that by just being silent. I couldn't believe it.

I'd heard from a few friends RBC wasn't the best bank for your average customer. A reader of this blog had mentioned the same thing in a comment. The bank seemed to be geared more to business, less to your average homeowner. But today's meeting proved to me RBC does want to help the little guy, at least this little guy.

Heather and I now have the lowest fixed rate we've ever had and that's going to help us pay off our mortgage earlier. I can't wait having that extra $1,200 a month for other things, like maybe myself!

I was convinced that today's meeting was going to turn out bad. I was wrong and let me tell you being wrong isn't always a bad thing. Today it was awesome.