Consumer complaint received 2023-09-01
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: FL
Product: Credit card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments
Sub-issue: Problem during payment process

Complaint:
XX/XX/2023 following Synchrony customer service supervisor info how to get higher payment added to fixed payment promo statement, that all I had to do was pay off new charge, which I repeated back, saying the amount, I took a cash reserve with local bank to do so, and minutes later called back customer service to do as supervisor had said, say I wanted {$250.00} paying now allocated to the new charge, so it would be paid in full. I was given a confirm number of payment, told in 48 hrs would be applied, including weekends. 
XX/XX/2023 found no allocation to pay off in my account, but found money misallocated to other promos that had fixed payments and were not past due. Called & chatted with bank & told allocation was scheduled to happen by end of that day, XX/XX/XXXX Mon, would see it by Tuesday. 
XX/XX/2023 Tuesday, no changes. Called to see what happened, and now told check back by the XXXX of XXXX, could be then, that sometimes it can take 1 to 2 billing cycles, and as I heard the rep coming up with more and more vague dates, realized sounded like a runaround to cause me to lose window of time payment could be applied without additional money. At no time was I told that the minimum of the fixed payments had to be paid on top of that, but was being told that my {$250.00} had satisfied the minimum, which turned out to be only true if I didn't want to pay off my new promo, as I would have to minus the minimum from new promo, and that would leave me {$140.00} short, so realized now it seemed this was purposefully getting kept from me as if to deceive me long enough to lose the window of time to pay the difference. 
When I got that lightbulb moment, then sent an internal message in reply to yet another generic response from a pleasant synchrony worker for help that I realized i had to pay the fixed payments normal minimums in order to have my original {$250.00} applied just to the new promo, and I would be doing that, but I would also be filing this complaint so that the consumer finance would help to oversee that Syn would do the right thing and actually apply my payments to my purchase I wanted to pay off, and not try to trick me I didn't need to pay more in order to do so. 
This last email got a response that due to nature of my last letter, it would be forwarded to the corporate office for help. So finally got them to stop giving canned response when said was filing formal complaint against lack of action from them and mismanagement of my payments to apply that money to another promo that had a fixed payment so in effect break two contracts I had with them to only have x dollars fixed payments until paid off. But still to date in my account the money paid stays applied to other promo and not to the new promo as Synchrony printed promotion tells me I can do, which is pay off before 6 months without interest or penalty. 
Even after I paid on XX/XX/2023 the {$110.00} for the fixed payment 's minimum, days yet ahead of payment due date, still none of the misappropriation amounts change, my {$250.00} I paid to pay off my new {$250.00} charge on XX/XX/2023, has been returned to that and that charge counted as paid in full. However, I was told in 24 hours the payment would be applied, but I heard those words before, so this time I need to seek supervised help on this allocation, that they both are actually applied and done, instead of being told they are 'done ' yet nothing changes. This to me is a stall tactic to block my being able to do a pay off, and make it more expensive for me to pay off by tacking on next billing cycle money due, and see if I will pay the higher monthly due the system is stuck on using my auto pay so that they can charge me fees for the auto pay is {$30.00} less than this new charge, but {$110.00} is only what I owe, and not {$140.00}. I am finding that Synchrony entreats me to get help by telephone, but on the back of paper statements they say that any help by phone does not count, yet I am told to make allocations by phone, so this seems a setup to think you are going to get to pay off your promo early easily only to find yourself facing seeing your money applied in wrong ways, and then a bunch of wait a few more days, and more days and so on as some kind of method to trick you to wait too long, and then blame it on their system. In the initial brochure I got on this carecredit, it says I could pay off my promo any time, but when I have come to actually do it in order to stop a sudden higher monthly payment I was not told would happen, am finding not being informed correctly of dollar amount to do so, and seems perhaps to get trapped into a system response that will then misapply the funds in other ways, and blame it on the system. 100 % though no promises have resulted in the wrongly moneys changed and the paid in full made.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation