Consumer complaint received 2018-03-20
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: IL
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Trouble using your card
Sub-issue: Can't use card to make purchases

Complaint:
On XX/XX/18 I made a purchase from XXXX XXXX XXXX  on their website for 4 bottles of XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX for a total of {$1600.00} with my Paypal credit card issued by XXXX XXXX. Minutes later, I received a phone call from the fraud department at XXXX XXXX in which I spoke to a representative who informed me that not only was my transaction flagged for suspicious activity, but also completely cancelled. I kindly asked the representative to hold for one quick minute because the transaction was both intended by me and that I wanted to repurchase the bottles before we spoke any further. I went back to the website to repurchase the 4 bottles using another credit card and found that the bottles had already sold out. This all happened in a span of mere minutes. 

I returned to the call with the representative from XXXX XXXX and told her that now we had a substantial problem ; the bottles were bought by someone else. I told her that was not surprising as I had immediately acted on the marketing email from XXXX XXXX XXXX because the next cheapest price for the exact same wine in the United States was likely near {$800.00} ea, {$3200.00} total. As I have researched, the cheapest available price for 4 bottles available at a merchant in the US is {$790.00} per bottle, {$3100.00} total. 

The representative acknowledged her sorrow but stated that fraud monitoring is for the protection of the consumer, etc, etc. I explained that I knew that when used properly, the consumer is not liable for credit card fraud, but the issuing bank is liable. Fraud monitoring is for the benefit of the issuing bank - I am wholly aware of fraud monitoring systems, I am on the executive management team of a bank that employees fraud monitoring on a debit card program. The representative did acknowledge that I was correct in my reasoning that fraud monitoring is used to reduce losses to the issuing bank due to card fraud. 

This was not the first time that XXXX XXXX had acted in this way. I have had several previous transactions with different wine merchants cancelled by Synchrony. I have previously called their fraud department to explain that while I understand these transactions may look suspicious in general, that I routinely make purchases like this and to not cancel these transactions. If they needed to call and verify, that would be welcome, but please do not cancel. The other transactions led to no loss, I was able to make my purchase with another card - of course with some level of embarrassment with the merchant as my initial payment source was declined. However, this transaction has caused a substantial loss as I can't purchase the wine at a price even remotely close to the price that I had actual confirmation of purchase for. XXXX XXXX made a decision to step in the middle of a legitimate transaction that I made with their card at a merchant of my choice. 

XXXX XXXX made the decision to cancel my transaction and has caused financial harm in spite of my actions to immediately repurchase the goods and previous attempts to inform them of my spending habits to modify their fraud monitoring algorithm on my account or proceeds of how they deal with suspicious activity on my account ( call and verify instead of cancel and call ).

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