Consumer complaint received 2022-07-07
Company: Bread Financial Holdings, Inc.
State: CA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: Store credit card
Issue: Trouble using your card
Sub-issue: Can't use card to make purchases

Complaint:
XXXX is a XXXX credit card financed through XXXX XXXX XXXXank XXXX The card had a fraudulent charge on it back in XX/XX/XXXX, and since getting that resolved, my card has been unable to be used to make purchases online ( which for a while was the only way to purchase from XXXX, store-pickup included, during the forced lockdowns ). I sent secure emails to the company several times explaining that my card wasn't working, asking if the new card maybe wasn't activated ( turns out it's a pre-activated card, no activation required ). Twice after, I requested replacement card, and for almost 2 years, my card/account didn't work on XXXX 's XXXX ( the location near me closed in XXXX, so I hadn't tried it in store ). I ended up near a location, and decided to try an in-store purchase, back in XXXX, and it finally worked. It STILL did not work for online purchases shortly after, in a test purchase. But the in-store worked. My statement came due, and I thought my previous auto pay ( set up from about XXXX years ago when the card was still actually working ) was still active. I guess it wasn't, and I incurred a late fee. I attempted to call the customer service line, but the automated message played and eventually the call disconnected. Turns out Comenity has a HUGE system outage/business outage. There are no customer service reps that I've been able to reach ; I can almost never get into my online account ( through XXXX and my other Comenity credit card through XXXX ) so I can't verify dates on anything. While the late payment was my fault as I had unfortunately not checked whether my old auto-pay was still set up, I am unable to come to a resolution with Comenity because they are currently not engaging with customers. There phone system is still giving a useless automated message and then disconnecting, so I can't talk to a person. I was able to use their " XXXX '' system to make a payment to cover the minimum/late fee + extra, but it is taking longer than usual to appear on my XXXX account XXXX during the XXXX minutes I was able to get into it earlier today. This is especially frustrating as I haven't even been able to use my XXXX card for about XXXX years, and now all of this goes down shortly after I was finally able to get it to work. I just want to negotiate with Comenity to hopefully remove the late fee, but I will pay it if they decline ; yet I can't even get a real person on the phone to help with this issue. Filing a report because this ultimately seems unacceptable that there is no way to contact customer support during such a ridiculous " outage '' ( that they're claiming )- are the customer service representatives working outside of their job descriptions as technical engineers?? Where is customer service? Basically, I was unable to use my card for over a year, my auto-pay didn't remain active, and I was charged a late fee that I just want to attempt to speak with someone about. ( I am unable to get documents, as the websites are all nearly impossible to get into. I have only been able to log in on XXXX occasions, after dozens of login attempts. )

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief