Consumer complaint received 2024-01-29
Company: UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION
State: GA
Product: Credit card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Advertising and marketing, including promotional offers
Sub-issue: Confusing or misleading advertising about the credit card

Complaint:
I took advantage of a credit card balance transfer for a promotion of 0 % APR for 15 months with a 3 % transaction fee with USAA Federal Savings Bank in XXXX of XXXX that stated : " 0 % Promotional XXXX for 15 months on Balance Transfers and Convenience Checks that post by XX/XX/XXXX Your variable Regular Cash Advance XXXX of 17.4 % applies thereafter. '' " Save on interest with a 0 % promotional APR for 15 months on Balance Transfers and Convenience Checks that post between XX/XX/XXXX, and XX/XX/XXXX. 

After your XX/XX/XXXX billing cycle, your Regular Cash Advance APR, currently 17.4 %, will apply to these balances. This APR will vary with the market based on the Prime Rate. Each Balance Transfer and Convenience Check has a transaction fee of 3 %. '' " Each Balance Transfer and Convenience Check has a transaction fee of 3 %. If you do a Balance Transfer or write a Convenience Check with this offer, we will charge you interest on all new and outstanding Purchases until you pay your entire balance in full, including the amount of any Balance Transfer or Convenience Check. After that, you will have a grace period on Purchases when you pay your entire statement balance each month by the payment due date. 

During any period when your account has Servicemembers Civil Relief Act or state military benefits applied, the maximum interest charged will be limited to 4 % and all account-related fees will be waived. '' At the conclusion of this period, I had been monitoring my credit card statements from USAA, and received a statement on XX/XX/XXXX for a statement that was ending XX/XX/XXXX, which had my promotional balance transfer still listed on it for an amount of {$7800.00} even though my actual balance on the statement itself was for {$7800.00} for total remaining balance, with a statement payment due date of XX/XX/XXXX. I made two payments, one on XX/XX/XXXX for {$1300.00} and a second on XX/XX/XXXX for {$6500.00} to satisfy the entire remaining balance. 

Unfortunately, I then received my next credit card statement ending XX/XX/XXXX, and was surprised to see a charge for interest on cash advances for {$94.00}. I reached out to USAA and was told that effective the end of XX/XX/XXXX that the entire {$7800.00} balance had moved to a cash advance status and began accruing interest at a 21.15 % rate. There was no other indication on any statement that this would happen, and so I brought this to USAA 's attention via several phone calls and requested that they waive the interest charge because it was not at all clear from the statement that this is what would happen. Their statement actually confusingly has a line that states : " Paying Interest and Your Grace Period : We will not charge you any further interest on your Purchase Balance on this Statement if you pay your entire New Balance by your Payment Due Date of XX/XX/XXXX '', which would lead a rational individual to believe that paying the entire remaining balance, or amount shown in " New Balance '' at the top of the statement by that payment due date would lead to no interest being accrued. My belief is that USAA is being intentionally vague and misleading with the way their statements are worded such that they can extract additional interest from individuals who otherwise had every intention of satisfying the requirements of their payment due date. 

I spoke with several individuals at USAA to again try and resolve this, and even received a call back from a XXXX who replied from the " Office of the CEO '' at USAA, however, USAA was unwilling to admit at all that during that call that they thought there was any confusion based on how the statements were worded, and that I should have known based on the terms of the offer ( written above ) that the interest would accrue immediately after the conclusion of the promotional balance transfer date. Interestingly, the first person I spoke with at USAA to bring this to their attention DID actually agree with me that it would be something that could be construed as confusing for a normal person to otherwise know just when exactly a payment was due to satisfy the requirements of a balance transfer, which is what ended up having the call escalated otherwise. 

Clearly USAA only cares about advertising for XXXX and XXXX XXXX games now, so it's not surprising that this continues to happen, as the culture that exists at USAA continues to be not one interested in it's original intent of serving the US military service members and their families. See the past 5 years history for USAA where they've been fined multiple times by the OCC for various serious infractions that equate to a " pattern of misconduct '' and skirting banking laws.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation