If you want to try paying less to your credit card company, go old school and make a phone call. While most cardholders have not requested a break on either interest rates or fees recently, the majority of those who did ask were successful, a recent survey shows. In a recent one-year period — a time when interest rates were rising — 81% of cardholders who asked for a lower rate got it, and most got a reduction of between 5 and 6 percentage points, according to research from CompareCards.com.

A customer signs for a purchase with a chip credit card at a Wal-Mart location in Burbank, California. Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

For late-payment fees, 87% were successful getting them eliminated, and 67% got their annual fee waived (24% were given a reduced annual fee). "I was surprised that the chances of success are sky-high for every break we asked people about," said Matt Schulz, chief industry analyst at CompareCards.com, which polled more than 1,000 people for its survey in March. The report also shows that although women were less likely to ask for a break, they had the same success rate as men when they did ask for one. However, about three-quarters of all respondents have not asked for any sort of reduced rate or waived fee, even as the amount of debt they carry — and the cost to finance it — has continued to climb.