Consumer complaint received 2018-11-17
Company: U.S. BANCORP
State: ID
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Fees or interest
Sub-issue: Charged too much interest

Complaint:
I opened a U.S. Bank Cash+ Visa Signature Card in XX/XX/2018 because it looked like it had good benefits for a 'daily use ' card. It also offered 0 % interest on balance transfers, so I opted to transfer a balance from another card, hoping to 'consolidate ' my accounts into US Bank , since I already had checking and savings through them. 

When it came time to make a payment I did what I thought was correct to avoid interest and paid my purchases + minimum payment. 

Here is what their website ( XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ) says about applying payments : " We apply your minimum payment to balances with lower APRs first, including promotional APRs. Amounts paid over the minimum payment will be applied in the order of highest to lowest APR balances. '' Unfortunately a little further down there is this information : " Your due date is 24 - 30 days after the close of each billing cycle. We will not charge you interest on purchases if you pay your entire balance by the due date each month. '' Unlike every other card with a 0 % promotional offer I've ever had - if you make any purchases it basically voids the 0 % interest on the promotional balance. This is very surprising and confusing to me. This seems to be confusing to their representatives, too. I called in XXXX when I got my first statement that included an interest charge, as I didn't understand why, since I'd paid purchases + minimum payment. I spent 45 minutes on the phone with a very pleasant representative who told me to pay 'purchases + minimum payment + interest ' to avoid interest charges. She didn't mention the little gem that says the entire balance needs to be paid, I think she wasn't aware of it. 

As I mentioned, I was pretty sure I had paid purchases + minimum payment, but the statement was difficult to parse since the balance transfer was listed on it, so we assumed I had missed something, and I said I would take her advice going forward. 

As a result, I paid the purchases + minimum payment + interest for my XXXX payment. 

I received my XXXX statement only to find another interest charge. I called again and spoke with a nice representative who told me the same thing, " Ma 'm, you need to pay the minimum payment + purchases + interest '' and I said - let 's walk through the math on the XXXX statement and as you can see, I did pay that. He agreed and said it didn't make sense. He consulted a supervisor and they told him, in the disclosure ( which I am now waiting 10 business days to get a copy of ), it states that you have to pay the full statement balance ( including the balance transfer that is supposed to be subject to a promotional interest rate ) to avoid paying interest. 

I feel like this is very deceptive, the statements are not clear and the representatives don't even seem to be aware of how this card works. 

Why offer a 0 % balance transfer with a daily use card if using the card for daily purchases then means that you have to pay the entire balance including the transferred balance to avoid interest?

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