Consumer complaint received 2016-09-20
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: NJ
Product: Credit card
Issue: Billing disputes

Complaint:
I will try to make this as short as possible. 2 years ago I had an issue with Synchrony Bank/Paypalsmartconnect. I had noticed that there were monthly payments that I had made not posted to my account. It took me numerous times to even manage to get any help from someone with this company about this issue. Every time I called, I would tell whom ever I spoke with that I had statements from my bank showing that the payments were accepted by them and where did they put the money? They would just ignore what I was telling them and say that they did n't receive the payment. After quite a few try 's, I finally got someone to help me, so I thought. We had agreed to put my account on a freeze until they could figure out what the problem was. I was sending them a package that included my payment information with the receipts from my bank stating that it was paid, etc. Within that time, there was another charge to my card that was not mine and I informed them of this and they were going to look into this too. After I sent them the package, I never heard another word from them via mail, phone, email. Not another bill or anything. Fast forward to now : I had run my credit report ( because I am applying for a mortgage ) and saw this account on there as a " charge-off ''. I was beyond upset of course. When I called Synchrony Bank, I was told that they could n't help me and that my account was turned over to a collection agency ( XXXX ) and to call them. So I did and when talking with them, I asked why I was never notified about this collection account and they read me back all the contact information that they had for me and it was completely incorrect! So all this time they were not able to contact me concerning this debt because Synchrony Bank gave them the wrong info. So now the only way I can even talk to Synchrony about the original issue with this account and to try and straighten it out was to pay the collection agency what they wanted and then Synchrony would then have the account back and would be able to talk to me. I was also advised that I could not dispute this case if I wanted to get approved for the mortgage that I was trying to get, so of course I paid the fee that the collection agency wanted because I did n't have a choice. When I was able to talk to someone at the bank, they were not very helpful with the remaining problem and with the current issue of how they were going to clear this up with my credit since they were the ones at fault. It was like they had all previous conversations completely wiped out of their system. I was basically told that I was out of luck! So now my question is, what do I do next? I still have some of the information showing some payments that were never posted to my account ( it was originally XXXX, but I only have XXXX proof of payments at the moment ). If this was all taken care of when they said they were going to, the balance that I just paid would have been less than half ( no late fees, etc. ) and this would be an issue on my credit report. Which of course is keeping me from getting a loan! I have several complaints about this banking institution. Something must be done.

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