Consumer complaint received 2017-03-24
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: OR
Product: Credit card
Issue: APR or interest rate

Complaint:
I was unfairly and wrongly charged back interest on unpaid promotional interest purchases. When logged into Amazon store card online, you can select promotional purchases, which shows you the promotional purchases that are going to expire, however in this instance, I had too many promotional purchases ending on XXXX XXXX, so many were apparently not being displayed. The amount I was charged for not paying the promotional purchases off in interest charges was {$420.00}! and then I was unknowingly being charged interest on top of that each proceeding month thereafter. Thus I thought I was paying off all of the promotional purchases before the expiration date, not knowing there were many more not even being displayed on the website page like they were supposed to be. This was caused by a glitch with amazon store card 's website being unable to display the full list of promotional purchases if they are too numerous, which I was unaware of. 

These purchases were displayed on my digital statement, but I felt no need to look at the digital statement as the promotional purchases page is SUPPOSED to show all of my soon to expire promotional purchases. In addition this information is not given to the consumer to be aware of. In addition, I was never contacted or told in anyway that I had not only did not pay off all of my promotional purchases, nor was I told I had an additional 30 day grace period to pay them off. If I had been told I had not payed them or that I had a 30 day period to pay them I would have certainly paid them off to avoid the massive interest charges. Additionally Amazon store card makes no effort whatsoever to educate consumers on how their system works, or how to use it. I believe since the promotional purchases page did not display all of my promotional purchases, only some of them, so that I could see them and make sure to pay enough to pay them off and avoid massive promotional interest charges, that I should be refunded my promotional interest charges stemming from that date and incident. 

Surely I would have paid off the entire amount to avoid subsequent massive interest charges of {$420.00} plus continuing interest charges to follow. I was completely unaware of all of this or my accruing interest until today, XXXX/XXXX/17. I was very strict about paying them off in time and had thought there was no issues on my account, nor interest accruing balances! In addition to all of this, XXXX of the most damning things against Synchrony Bank Amazon Store Card is, nowhere on the monthly statements does it show or mention ANYTHING about a current balance subject to continuing monthly interest, so a consumer would have no idea there are charges accruing monthly interest as the statements only display information about FUTURE expiring promotional purchases, neither does it show or display any information or amount for expired promotional purchases that will continue to accrue interest, this in of itself should not be legal as a consumer would have no idea what is actually occurring with their account by just looking at the statements! In addition the information is confusing and well hidden, and not displayed prominently or clearly.

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