Consumer complaint received 2022-03-25
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: KY
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments
Sub-issue: Problem during payment process

Complaint:
I opened a CareCredit card in XXXX. Since, I have made my payments on time. The company has promotional balances and non promotional balances. The promotional balances have due dates and if paid off early they do not collect interest. 

In XX/XX/XXXX, I decided to pay on most of the non-promotional balance. However upon later discovery, they had allocated it incorrectly and in violation of the Credit Card Act of XXXX and had given me false information regarding said allocation. When I began making regular allocations in XX/XX/XXXX and discovered they were not allocating them correctly, I filed a dispute and asked for investigation. I have recorded phone calls of the customer service representatives saying they admit the XXXX payment was incorrectly applied, however it has been too long for them to correct it. They were also unable to correct any of the payments between XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX despite the fact I filed the dispute well within the timeframe and said their only option was to disperse a refund check of around {$30.00} for what I overpaid for the most recent month. However, over on the XXXX complaint, they continue to lie about how it was applied correctly and state my minimum payment was taken out of the amount, despite the fact I had already made my minimum payment for the month prior to making the allocation. They also falsely stated any amount must go to the promotional balance, although the Credit Card Act of XXXX states any amount paid over the minimum must go to the highest Interest-collecting charge unless a promotion expires in the next XXXX days ( each time I made an allocation, I did not have any expiring promotions until XX/XX/XXXX ). 

I decided to go ahead and submit the full disputed non-promotional balance as well as the full amount for my next due promotion but to record the entire process to catch them if they tried it again. And sure enough, they did. On XX/XX/XXXX, I made a payment of {$2200.00}. Initially, it showed as being applied correctly. However, when the statement was generated, it was suddenly wrong again and thus I was charged interest for an amount I had already paid. I contacted customer support and they told me it was a mistake and they would correct it. Then, the day before my payment is due, I contact customer support as it is showing incorrectly, they tell me that BOTH customer service reps from before had made a mistake and allocated it incorrectly. They told me it would take up to XXXX months to correct although it has already been nearly XXXX months since the payment was made and XXXX month since the issue was noted and that this has now happened to my account multiple times. At this point, I am concerned that the company may be intentionally mis-allocating the payments of their customers in order to defraud them out of more money, and that they intentionally make the dispute resolution process difficult and lengthy so they can run out the timer on investigations. 

This repeated mistake of theirs has now cost me nearly {$5000.00}. They have been made aware of it multiple times and fail to offer any real resolution, only useless apologies.

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 monetary relief