Consumer complaint received 2022-12-08
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: AR
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: Store credit card
Issue: Fees or interest
Sub-issue: Problem with fees

Complaint:
I purchased a mattress at Mattress firm, I was approved and signed up for an in-store credit card with them through Synchrony bank. I logged into their website to make a payment and sign up for auto pay. Beforehand I was informed by a representative over the phone that if I wait until XX/XX/XXXX to make a payment on the card I could have Auto-Pay auto-draft from my account on the XXXX of the month instead of the end of the month. ( The wife and myself get paid at the beginning of the month so we like our payments early on it helps with budgeting. ) Well on XX/XX/XXXX I logged into their site and set up auto-pay along with my first payment of {$120.00}. Well around XX/XX/XXXX I checked my bank balance to see that my account was negative XXXX. I was charged the entire statement balance of the card from Synchrony bank at the end of the month. As I'm panicking because XXXX is coming up and I'm XXXX dollars in the whole, my bank even said the amount was posted and not pending. My Synchrony balance showed that my balance was XXXX owed as opposed to the XXXX that I owed at the time of setting up my auto-pay. Meanwhile I reach out to Synchrony via website text chat. There was no option to print out a transcript of the conversation but I was told from the first person that they would send me a check to fix the error and asked for my address. I got disconnected from the chat and reconnected with someone else, they informed me that they cant send a check and that the employee who said that was new. They explained to me that since my account didn't have the funds that my bank should cancel the transaction automatically in the morning. Skeptical, I reached out to Regions and got a hold of an agent via text chat as well who was extremely helpful. By XXXX the next morning the transaction was refused and my Synchrony balance was back at the original amount. That is a very stressful situation. I cancel auto pay and go back into the auto pay screen and very sneakily is the option in three radio button style set up, the options include, XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX or pay Minimum balance ( XXXX ). Well apparently I had XXXX XXXX XXXX selected as default. I don't know about you but when I set up for auto-pay, I think one would by default only want to pay the minimum or a custom amount before setting up auto pay to have them draft the entire amount for just one month. Autopay literally makes zero sense for just one month, the entire balance. 

I now owe a XXXX dollar fee for my monthly payment this month for my account refusing the payment. It's XXXX dollars, not a huge deal whatever, I'll pay it but I'm willing to bet that this is something that is recurring at Synchrony where many people who sign up for auto-pay have this happen to them and Synchrony gets to reap the benefits of tacking on a fee. I'm not sure what can be done at this point but I'm one month into working with them and this is entirely unacceptable. 

Thank you.

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