Consumer complaint received 2022-06-01
Company: Bread Financial Holdings, Inc.
State: GA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: Store credit card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Other problem

Complaint:
I had Comenity Bank for years and went through tough times. I had a few late payments and missed payments. Most of the time they were accidental late or missed payments because of the amount of cards I had with them and confused the due dates of those cards.My main issue is that they would penalize me for paying down their store cards and it would cause my credit to get worse and they reported a late payment that was caused by their system even though they wouldnt report unless its more than two missed payments in a row. They would constantly lower my credit limit to the current balance after making a large payment or sometimes even lower than the current balance putting me at 100 % or over my credit limit. I asked many times why would they do that if they claim to help with credit and they would always say its based on my credit reports. The issue is that if they are basing their info on the credit reports and they are also drastically lowering my limit after large payments causing those 100 % or over the limit reporting. That would just continue the cycle of keeping my report in a negative status and penalizing me for the negative status that they caused ; by drastically lowering my limit even though, I made a large payment to try to lower my balance and utilization rate. They would even have reasons for lowering it due to high credit usage or balance which they caused. If they didnt lowering the credit limit causing close to 100 % usuage, they would just close the account after you paid it in full. Which again doesnt help anyone whos trying to rebuild their credit since now the credit availability is lower. One of the last straws was the payment system selecting the wrong account causing a late payment on my Lane Bryant store card. They also never reported a payment late if less than 2 months late as long as you make a paymentat least a week before the next due date. It dropped my score XXXX points and even the representative seen the mistake but was not able to do anything about it. I fixed the error as soon as I realized the mistake. It was caused when I changed the amount that I was paying online and it automatically defaulted to the wrong bank account instead of the one that I already had selected in progress.You can review current and future payments. You can edit each payment and I selected to change payment amount of the payment that I already processed. I didnt change the bank, the date, or start the process over. Because of the error, It caused a late fee which the representative immediately recognized the error. This error resulting in a drop in credit score. Because of their practices with lowering my credit limit and increasing my utilization rates. I had to close the last remaing accounts. I was even scared to make larger payments or it it in full because I didnt want them to lower my credit, cause an overage, or close the account after I paid in full.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation