Consumer complaint received 2022-10-09
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: IL
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Other problem

Complaint:
I have been having an issue where bills post far too late into a cycle for my own comfort. While the due date is always the XXXX of each month, and payment made after the due date and before the bill is posted gets reflected to the previous month so there have been occasions where I have been " late '' because I paid too early. This is problematic because I shouldn't be considered late because I pay before they want me to. 

As best as I can gather, they generate the bill on the XXXX of each month which I then can see by the XXXX of each month. Even if I always saw it on the XXXX though this date is not always legal. 

" Under federal law, a credit card issuer must establish procedures to ensure that statements are mailed to cardholders at least 21 days before a payment is due.However, sometimes there may be a delay in mail delivery, resulting in your statement arriving later than usual. '' In practice this means that on the date that the bill is posted to the account the bill must be due in 22 days or more since " 21 days before the due date '' is the same as saying that the due date is in 22 days. 

On a month with 31 days, having the bill post on the XXXX means that I will have 23 days. Scummy, but legal. On a month with 30 days I will have 22 days, but since I don't always get to see this when I check on the XXXX ( possibly because of the time they post it? ) this isn't always legal since the law isn't about when they generate the bill, but when they SEND the bill, and since these bills are sent electronically there is no allowance for a time delay like they'd get with a printed bill. 

Of course, on a month like XXXX which has XXXX or XXXX  days they are always in violation. If the bill posts on the XXXX of XXXX I will only have XXXX or XXXX  days to pay ( depending on what year it is ) which in either case is less than XXXX  days and is therefore illegal. 

I tried reaching out to them to request that they make my date post earlier in the cycle mentioning that I know people whose bill posts a few days earlier which would always be legally compliant, but I couldn't get anywhere. 

I tried their secure message system, but aside from only having a limit of 500 characters I am unable to send any messages to them ( whereas I can through XXXX 's system ). I just get the error, " There is a problem with the information you provided. Please go back and try again. '' no matter which browser I use. 

I tried their chat system as well. First I encountered a bot with only 6 available responses and would only ever say : " Oops! My wires got crossed for a second. I may have missed something. Can you please try again? '' But eventually it transferred me to what I thought was a real person, but half of what I said would get cut off and the AI would again say : " Oops! My wires got crossed for a second. I may have missed something. Can you please try again? '' Which indicated, to me, that I was still talking to an AI. I had to copy and paste repeatedly to get anything to go through and in the end the bot couldn't help me anyway.

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