Consumer complaint received 2017-08-26
Company: BARCLAYS BANK DELAWARE
State: CA
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:
In XXXX of XXXX I made a purchase at XXXX and charged the purchase to my XXXX XXXX card issued by XXXX XXXX. The purchase was a promotional purchase made with deferred interest if paid within 18 months. 

Every month since then I have paid the new charges plus an portion of the deferred charges. Each statement showed that the deferred balance was going down, as well as the deferred interest. 

The XXXX/XXXX/XXXX statement showed a total balance due of {$410.00} due by XXXX/XXXX/XXXX. I paid of the entire balance {$410.00} which was credited 5 days before the payment was due, on XXXX. During the period between the XXXX statement and the XXXX statement I continue to use the card for it 's normal monthly purchase plus and emergency charge for XXXX XXXX. 

When I received the XXXX statement I saw that NONE of the promotion balance was paid down. Calling XXXX I was told that the payment was credited to NEW charges BEFORE they were credited to OLD charges. I was told that this was because the new charges would have a higher interest rate then the 0 % promotional rate. 

FIRST - the new charge were not billed till XXXX and are not due until XXXX. If I were to pay off the new charges on XXXX bill by XXXX - regardless of the promotional balance - since I paid the entire due balance on the previous bill - I would be charged ANY interest. ( I will not be able to pay off the entire amount in the next 60 days. ) Because I will not be able to the new charges by XXXX I will be charged the ENTIRE DEFERRED INTEREST on the promotional purchase, even though I paid the full balance due on the XXXX statement. 

TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE - I was told by XXXX XXXX that if I would have paid the bill on XXXX - the last day it was due - rather than XXXX - 5 days early - the payment would have been credited to the promotional balance because it was within 60 days of the date the total promotional balance is due. THEREFORE - I am being penalized because I paid off the total balance of my bill 5 days before that due date. 

I have NEVER had a credit card, or any credit account, that did not credit payments to the oldest amount due. ( In looking at all my old bills I now discovered that all my payments were credited to new charges instead of old balance because there were new charges on the credit card. That is - payments ALWAYS went to new purchase that were NOT DUE before they were credit to old balances. ) Because of this practice - XXXX has ; 1 ) increased the deferred interest charged because they did not properly credit payments ( I always paid off new charges on the previous bill PLUS a large portion of the promotional balance ), and 2 ) made it difficult to pay off promotional balances because the always credited payments against new charges ( before they were due ) rather than old charges. 

By crediting the payments on new charges XXXX is not honoring their " Grace period on interest if paid within 25 days of the date of the statement. '' In addition - on the attached XXXX statements - it is stated in paragraph B of How to avoid paying interest on purchases - it mentions how to avoid when not paying balance in full - implying that there is no interest when paying the balance in full. I paid the balance in full on XXXX - but they applied it to new purchases forcing me to pay interest on previous purchases EVEN THOUGH I PAID THE BALANCE IN FULL. 

Finally - when speaking to the customer service operator AND her supervisor I was told " I agree with what you are saying - but - once the computer allocates payments there is nothing we can do about it. '' I know enough about credit cards and about computers to know this is n't true and it is an insult to me as a consumer to blame the 'computer program ' for not being able to do what is fair and right.

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