Consumer complaint received 2017-03-04
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: GA
Product: Credit card
Issue: Customer service / Customer relations

Complaint:
I have a Care Credit account issued by Synchrony Bank. I just spoke with a manager named XXXX, who is located in Arizona, and who claims that the CFPB " makes '' Synchrony issue its confusing monthly billing statements. When I pressed him on this, he said because that the CFPB has approved Synchrony 's billing statement plan, it is tantamount to " making '' Synchrony use the plan. When I said that approving a plan is completely different from " making '' the bank use the plan, he stated it was a " matter of verbiage. '' He became more and more " snotty '' as the phone call went on. 
I have XXXX " promotions '' with Synchrony. XXXX have expired and XXXX are unexpired. Once a promotion expires, Synchrony stops listing it separately on the monthly bill and the customer begins paying interest on the expired promotion. The amount of money making up the expired promotions are lumped together into a " balance amount '' on the bill. Evidently, Synchrony applies the payment amount first to promotions that have not yet expired. If the promotion has not yet expired, that means the customer has not yet begun to pay interest on it. It saves the customer money to have the payment applied to an expired promotion, because that 's the one the customer is paying interest on. The customer has the right to designate which promotion the monthly payment will be applied to. In order to see whether the payment has been correctly applied to the promotion the customer chose, the customer has to work from XXXX separate billing statements and do math. 
I works like this : The month in which the promotion expires is the last time it 's listed separately on the bill. I have an expired promotion of {$320.00}. It was listed as expired on the XX/XX/2017 bill. I asked that my XXXX dollar payment be applied to that promotion, since I 'm now paying interest on it. On my XX/XX/2017 bill, the XXXX dollars was applied to an unexpired promotion of {$320.00} that wo n't expire until XX/XX/2017. Now, on the XX/XX/2017 bill, the {$320.00} amount has been reduced to {$250.00} ( because {$75.00} was deducted from {$320.00} ). 
In order for me to find out for sure if the {$75.00} will be applied to the expired amount, I have to wait for the XX/XX/2017 bill. If the promotion reduced to {$250.00} on the XX/XX/XXXX. bill goes back up to {$320.00} on the XX/XX/XXXX bill, that will mean the {$75.00} was applied, as requested, to the expired promotion of {$320.00}. 
Since the expired promotion will never again be listed separately on my bill, I will have to keep going back to the last bill on which it appeared ( XX/XX/2017 ), and doing addition and subtraction on the recent bills to see whether the expired promotions are being paid as per request. 
By the way, I have to cal Synchrony every month to have the payment applied to one of the interest bearing promotions. 
I suggest that the CFPB look at this system and suggest ways to make it less of a burden on the cosumer.

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 non-monetary relief