Consumer complaint received 2023-06-24
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: PA
Product: Debt collection
Sub-product: Credit card debt
Issue: Took or threatened to take negative or legal action
Sub-issue: Sued you without properly notifying you of lawsuit

Complaint:
Synchrony Bank is trying to sue me in a highly suspicious bully move. I have an account with them that I have been paying through their collector, XXXX XXXX XXXX. The account entered collections about two years ago and I've been trying to pay little tiny bits of it just to keep it semi-alive and avoid the situation where we've arrived. Synchrony has made no attempts to contact me or demand more from me. The last contact I ever had with them was the original debt letter sometime around XXXX.  

If nothing else, this is a bully move that will only result in a bankruptcy filing if it continues any further. They're trying to sue someone with nothing left to give them. I share a house in my mother's name, and she's close to XXXX XXXX XXXX  living off social security. I live almost paycheck to paycheck with a little wiggle room of a XXXX XXXX XXXX  each month, and that's going to shrink more as soon as student loans resume. The biggest piece of property in my name is my XXXX XXXX, which is financed until the end of XXXX. The only other big thing I own is a 401(k) split between 10 funding sources with around XXXX saved up, but I have no intention on touching that for the next three decades.

Part 1 of my complaint. The following things Im going to say are NOT something Im blaming Synchrony of doing. Ill just try to provide some context to how things arrived at their current state.

Dad died from XXXX XXXX  in XXXX. Mom and dad have been divorced since I was about XXXX, and the family picture has been weird, to give you the very, very, simple version. Starting from the end of XXXX, stepmom (and whoever else was encouraging her) was doing some VERY criminal things just to play games with me. Withholding info about dads life insurance in XXXX, and then saying Duhhh I forgot. Committing probate abuse / financial fraud / SOMETHING in early XXXX where she staged a fake paperwork fiasco that delayed the annuities dad left me and my brother for an extra month. The month AFTER her underhanded annuity hijinks, someone with access to my then-current XXXX XXXX went on an online shopping spree for fancy ladys shoes and cosmetics gift cards. I know she had access to that account number because I gave it to her in an attempt to help her with the plane tickets to the funeral. She would also have access to my SSN from my dads records (Keep this detail in mind. Its going to come up later!)

Dad wanted us to all be a happy family together. I was there at his bedside six weeks before he died when he said it to me. He was so happy, all things considered. Now NO ONE on his side related to me legally or biologically will say a PEEP to me!

The Michigan probate attorney who originally handled the process in XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, turned out to be a totally corrupt clown who shouldnt be trusted in any kind of legal practice. In XXXX, I was frantically sending out inquiries to ever probate/family attorney I could find near dads district. XXXX replied to one of them by setting a phone conference where HE called ME. We talked for about half an hour while he tried to play pretend-therapist. But the problem with him is, he never sent out probate notifications my brother and I were legally required to see as interested parties written in dads will. When I reported this to Michigan Attorney XXXX XXXX later in XXXX, XXXX wrote a long-winded legalese response to the Commission were he completely lied and said he never called me. Afterwards, he sent me a final email where all he said was Have a nice life! Other lawyers from that district have told me the legal timeline on the original probate could still be open right now because the original forms were never properly served. At the end of the day, XXXX is partially or wholly responsible for setting in motion the Dont give an XXXX attitude my family has used in everything theyve done toward me ever since. His job was to explicitly PREVENT something like this, and then he practically laughed in my face about it!

Heres where it gets overwhelmingly creepy: There is a local car dealership in XXXX XXXX PA, XXXX XXXX (now apparently XXXX XXXX that was messing with my car GAP  insurance in late XXXX and early XXXX. If you ask them about it today, theyll tell you Oh but we were so prompt and courteous when we were handling XXXX XXXX  paperwork. Well, I dont know what alternate dimension theyre living in these days, because I have the whole e-mail chain from their finance lady XXXX XXXX showing thats absolutely untrue. She was lying to me constantly. She was delaying things. When I finally got the Pennsylvania AG Consumer Protection involved mid-way through XXXX, she sent the paperwork in for the second time or the third time, and I magically had my missing insurance refund about a month later. 

I can almost guarantee you she NEVER sent in the paperwork to the insurance company until it became a legal complaint. She was lying, and dragging me along, and testing me the ENTIRE TIME. Why did she do that? Who put her up to it? Im NEVER allowed to know! I did eventually receive the small refund amount that was due to me, but XXXX XXXX was still committing some form of insurance fraud and consumer abuse for six months before that. Now they keep spamming me with physical ad mail that Ive told them repeatedly to stop, and they ignore me. And Ive opened new complaints through the AG telling them to stop the mail, and they ignore those too. Now the local XXXX XXXX Police are involved.

When we got to around XXXX XXXX in the car insurance fiasco, XXXX  started using COVID as an excuse in her e-mails explaining why everything was taking so long. Thats the moment my brain said Enough is enough and I got the AG involved. 

I have an uncle on moms side who died from COVID at the end of that year. He was a retired fire fighter. Thats a GREAT association thats always going to be on my mind!

Somewhere out there, in the realm of hypothetical lawsuits I could file if I ever truly knew what was going on, is an accumulated sum of dollar signs. And Im betting more than one person owes me some jail time. Whether the problem is dads will was never valid in the first place, or it was all the crime and fraud and the abusive gaslighting and the online trolling that happened in the years afterwards, Im being illegally blocked from accessing SOME amount of money. What is that amount? How many different people owe me something? I have no way of knowing, and I have no way of even trying to estimate.

For the longest time in XXXX to XXXX (before EVERYONE on dads half of the family just completely turned me into a non-person), I would be at my wits end over this credit card / identity theft stuff, and the ONLY response Id sometimes get back is someone saying But the will was valid! When Im not even talking THE WILL! What does the will have to do with this? If dad were still alive, and he saw how these fine folks were treating me, the will wouldnt even EXIST in the form it was executed. THATS how the will factors into this! Its waste of time arguing anything else about it!

My family members have been doing everything in their power to financially rob me since at least XXXX. The debt situation were now arguing about didnt start snowballing until XXXX  when I needed to take out bigger consolidation loans and traded in my XXXX XXXX for a cheaper XXXX XXXX (which lowered my monthly loan payments by abouXXXX XXXX AND triggered the GAP insurance fiasco at XXXX XXXX).

Ive got a few new words to say to this car dealership as soon as I finish writing this report. Im currently in a middle of a police case for NEW mail they keep sending me even after I keep telling them to stop that, and I opened a NEW AG case against them on XXXX XXXX Weve almost reached the deadline the AG gave them, and it doesnt sound like theyre responding to anyone. 

Part 2 of my complaint. The following thing Im going to say IS directly related to Synchrony, and its where the suspicious part of my complaint comes into play. 

This is a recap of the past six months alone: In XXXX someone with access to my SSN fraudulently ATTEMPTED (and failed) to open a rewards credit card at XXXX XXXX  in my name. In XXXX, someone fraudulently DID open a rewards credit card at the same bank and mailed it to me. In XXXX, someone tried to open an online deposit account at Bank of America. In every case, it was someone who applied for the accounts and then had all the account welcoming info sent to my physical address or my XXXX  account. Ive been working with the local West Hills police for the past three months, but the leads are narrow, to say the least. I cant send them to arrest a phantom.

Last month, ANOTHER debt collector (XXXX XXXX XXXX) violated the FDCPA by trying to call me when they were requested in writing to only contact me by mail or e-mail (so I always have a paper trail). The complaint I submitted to them through the CFPB and the Pennsylvania AG  made their current collector instantly give up and spit the debt back to XXXX. 

Today XXXX, Synchrony comes into the case with NO warning, NO attempt to contact me nicely, and slams a civil complaint straight through the District Justice office. 

When the identity theft started up again six months ago, all I could think was: Is this some crazy family member messing with me again? Because thats the logical evolution of the things theyve done to me in the past. Now that concern has turned into: Was that a bank somewhere that was trying to find out if Im still alive? Or verify my address? By casually committing identity fraud? And now one of them is trying to sue me? Thats a very disturbing and disgusting thought, if theres any truth in it. 

Other parties involved in this complaint: Im sending the same report against Synchrony to the Pennsylvania AG and CFPB.  I will be contacting XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX at XXXX XXXX XXXX Police  next week to update him about the XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX problem. I will call XXXX XXXX. XXXX District office to notify her of my intent to submit my defense on XXXX XXXX. AND I will begin a new frantic search for a debt collection defense attorney, since Im completely alone in the dark right now. Im really nervous everyone is going to just recommend I accept the default judgment and file straight to bankruptcy, which was NEVER my intention here.

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