Consumer complaint received 2020-05-24
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: VA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: Store credit card
Issue: Fees or interest
Sub-issue: Unexpected increase in interest rate

Complaint:
In XX/XX/XXXX, I purchased a couch at XXXX XXXX XXXX for about {$1500.00} and was offered a promotional credit deal run by Synchrony Bank with deferred interest, which would effectively have been 0 % interest if I paid off the principal before 18 months. Right after the purchase, I specifically set my auto-pay to {$88.00} so that the full amount would be paid off in 18 months. A couple months later, I purchased two armchairs at Ashley Home Furniture ( owned by the same parent company as XXXX ) for about {$600.00} and was offered to pay for these armchairs on the same Synchrony Bank card. I agreed, thinking I would receive some sort of notification asking for a similar auto-pay for these armchairs to pay them off before the promotion ended, and assuming that the {$1500.00} and {$600.00} would be treated and paid off separately because they had different terms, time periods, promotions, store locations, etc. Instead, Synchrony Bank simply added this {$600.00} to my existing {$1500.00} balance for the couch, and started using my {$88.00} auto-pay to pay for the {$600.00} first, effectively setting me up to get hit the deferred interest on the {$1500.00} when the 18 months ended ( and this is what ended up happening ). All of the prior 18 months ' worth of interest, set at a very high interest rate of 30 %, kicked in starting XX/XX/XXXX and I wasn't even given a warning via email or paper letter beforehand that this was going to happen. Instead, Synchrony Bank was expecting me to go into the statements and read the fine print that this was going to happen, when I had already set the auto-pay and thus didn't have a reason to click the link, login, and read every statement. I didn't realize I was paying interest ( or had paid all 18 months ' of the deferred interest starting XX/XX/XXXX ) until XX/XX/XXXX. By then, I had ended up paying over {$1000.00} on {$2100.00} worth of couch/armchair. I believe this is unfair, predatory lending for two reasons : 1 ) When I added the {$600.00} armchairs to my balance, I should have been notified via email and/or letter, informed that this {$600.00} was going to start being drawn down first before my existing {$1500.00} balance, and been informed that I may want to increase my monthly payment amount accordingly. Instead, I received ZERO notice and the two purchases were just lumped into the same balance with no distinction on the Synchrony Bank website. 
2 ) Before the deferred interest took effect, I should have been notified via email and/or letter, SEPARATE from the monthly statements ( where the notification is buried among all of the other confusing terminology and numbers ), explaining to me in plain language that interest will be starting on X date if I don't pay off the remainder of my balance. I understand it is not in the business interest of Synchrony Bank to give a notice separate from the statement, but it is the right thing to do and is a simple automation that can be built into their communications system. The fact that they gave zero notice other than the statement is unacceptable from a fairness perspective. I would have gladly paid off the rest of balance if I would have known, but I had zero knowledge that this was going to happen. 

I spoke to two Synchrony representatives who both told me they can not grant any exceptions by waiving or reimbursing my interest because, in their words, that is discriminatory lending. I believe they are XXXX the law in this way, which was designed to prevent discrimination in the OTHER direction -- to not unfairly charge certain consumers higher interest rates or deny them credit in a discriminatory fashion.

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