Consumer complaint received 2019-07-19
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: NJ
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Getting a credit card
Sub-issue: Sent card you never applied for

Complaint:
I have had a zero percent " Care Credit '' card owned by Synchrony Bank for several years that I've used to pay for dental care. I've always paid my monthly bills and have never had any problems with this card or bank. Today I received a new " Care Credit '' card in the mail. Assuming that I just needed to activate it, I did so. When I went to cut up the old card, I noticed that the expiration date XX/XX/22.  I called Synchrony customer service and was informed that I had just activated an actual Master Card that is owned by Synchrony Bank and that while I could still use it to pay for dental care services with providers that accepted Care Credit with the same conditions of zero percent credit if paid monthly over 12 months, that I now also had a Mastercard which had other benefits but at interest rates as describe in the terms and conditions. 

I said that it wasn't clear that I was activating a totally different account, that the there was no information provided stating that I was not opening a brand new Mastercard credit card when I accessed the automated system to activate, and there was no information provided on the automated system stating that there would be no impact to my credit rating/credit report once I activated the card. I actually had to speak to several customer service agents to finally find out that since this was just an " upgrade '' to my existing account ( that too was not mentioned in the automated activation prompts ) that there would be no impact on my credit rating as a result of the upgrade. 

I then asked if I could terminate the Mastercard version of my Care Credit and was told that that was not possible to revert to the original account and if I closed the Mastercard upgrade, I'd be closing the entire account. I do have a email into Synchrony corporate but was told I'd have to wait 10-14 days for a response. 

This seems like deceptive advertising, not fully informing consumer that they are not just activating a new card for the same account but instead upgrading to a totally new credit card. Even their terms and conditions mentions nothing about these upgrade nuances or about the fact that the customer 's credit rating would not be impacted. It seems like Synchrony needs to let customers know in the actual activation prompts that the customer is activating a totally new upgraded account and that this will have no impact on their credit rating. 

One additional item - the activation prompts DO ask the customer if they want to increase their credit limit and then ask for income information. This seems totally inappropriate to be asking customers, especially those who may be elderly and inclined to share information without knowing what they are doing. Instead, increasing the credit limit should be more totally informed process whereby a live Synchrony agent discusses any income information. 

Thank you for representing consumer rights! 

and that told that since I activated the new " Care Credit Master Card '', I could not reverse the activation and terminate the new account

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