Consumer complaint received 2020-11-10
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: VA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Getting a credit card
Sub-issue: Application denied

Complaint:
This complaint is not because of a denial but because this entity is : ( a ) lying to consumers about the Privacy Act as a front to withhold information about credit card application denials ; ( b ) refuses to provide information regarding why an application was denied except via a letter for which the consumer must wait 7-10 days to receive ; and ( c ) lying to consumers that if they provide their email address on the application they will receive information regarding a denial, thereby inducing a consumer to submit yet another credit card application with the email address because the consumer believes there has been a mistake regarding the original denial. 

We believed there may have been a mistake regarding my husband 's original application for credit on XX/XX/2020, and after this entity refused to provide him a reason for the denial in a method other than mail, someone told us that same day that if we had listed our email then we would have been provided the reason for denial. Since we both make approximately {$300000.00}, and have credit scores of over 800, we assumed that we could just submit a new joint application with this higher joint income, and would make sure our emails were listed so that if there was another denial, we would know exactly what happened. Instead, they denied us yet again, yet refused to tell us why. In some ways, they induced us to have yet another hard inquiry to our credit report, yet we did not even receive an email to explain why. Again, the denial is not the main focus of the complaint ; the focus is on them lying about the law to withhold the basis for denial. 

Then they kept trying to allege that it was the Federal Government that prevented them from disclosing the reason for denial to us. They were literally using lies to allege to consumers that they could not tell us anything due to the Privacy Act. I know this to be false since nothing in the Privacy Act prohibits financial institutions from being able to quickly disclose reasons for denial over the phone, as long as they meet basic safeguards, especially when they already were able to verify my identity. I literally asked one of their supervisors to answer " yes or no '' to " [ t ] he Privacy Act prohibits you from telling a basis for credit denial over the phone '' and he answered yes. He also agreed that there is literally no way that they could provide a basis for denial over the phone, but also admitted that once the letter is received, then the consumer could talk about the basis for denial over the phone, which completely undercut their supposed legal argument. It also made it even more clear that they were lying and trying to throw the Federal Government under the bus just so consumer would incorrectly blame the Federal Government rather than the bank. 

This is honestly a disgusting and un-American practice for this corporation to be engaging in this type of behavior. What is actually happening is they are either too lazy to provide bases for denials, or have yet to invest in proper software, and rather than being open about this, they lie to the American public to trick them into thinking that the Federal Government is forcing this entity to act in such a ridiculous manner.

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