Consumer complaint received 2019-09-17
Company: Bread Financial Holdings, Inc.
State: CA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: Store credit card
Issue: Advertising and marketing, including promotional offers
Sub-issue: Confusing or misleading advertising about the credit card

Complaint:
In XX/XX/XXXX, I purchased a new bicycle from XXXX. I partially used a promotional rate that was 12 months, interest free. The bank that services this is Comenity. I did not receive a statement from them until Mid-XXXX XXXX, with the first payment due by XX/XX/XXXX. I called Comenity, and asked how I could make a payment in XXXX and to set up automated payments so that I would pay 100 % of the balance off within a year. I was told at that time that I had to wait until my statement arrived before I could make a payment. As soon as the statement arrived, I started making large payments and set up automated payments through my bank. I admittedly did not read the fine print that the promotional rate expired in XXXX not XXXX even though no payment was due until XX/XX/XXXX. My XX/XX/XXXX statement email arrived and there was a HUGE interest charge for all the interest for the entire amount of the original balance. I called Comenity as well as XXXX and they were unwilling to make an adjustment even though I was willing and able to immediately pay the entire remaining balance. I believe that it was highly deceptive to 1. Have the promotional rate expire 2 months before the one year anniversary of the first statement. 2. To have 100 % of the interest due on the original balance when 85 % of the balance had been paid off before the promotional rate ended. The only place that Comenity could refer me to was a fine print  section on the statement in XXXX that stated that the promotional rate would end on XX/XX/XXXX. The email notices that I received each month said nothing of this and since everything was automated, I felt no need to log in each month, download the actual statement, then read all the fine print. Upon reviewing my statements over the last year, the full statements do state that the promotional rate ends on XX/XX/XXXX beginning with the XX/XX/XXXX statement, however you must download them and read carefully to see this. I was encouraged by Comenity to " Go Paperless '' so to read this I would have had to log in, download the statements and read them each month which makes the system skew toward missing this " gotcha ''. If I had kept getting the paper statements, I would likely have caught this. The reality today is that when you set something up in paperless with automated payments, you only check in on these things periodically. I am certain that Comenity is fully aware of this and that their business plan for this is deliberate. I fully understand that I should have paid closer attention but I feel this practice takes unfair advantage of people and it should be made much more clear that 12 months does not actually mean 12 months of statements. I believe that there should have been a more direct message to me so this could have been avoided. I believe that this practice is deceptive and predatory. If they were trying to be above board, the email statement notification should have had a note with the promotional rate expiration in it. I can afford to pay this but I am afraid that many others could be caught up in this fraudulent practice and I would like to try to prevent others from falling into this trap. I believe that this is firmly the fault of Comenity. I spoke to XXXX and they are taking this up with their financial team on their end.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation