Consumer complaint received 2023-10-31
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Advertising and marketing, including promotional offers — Confusing or misleading advertising about the credit card
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. (NH)

CHASE ( through their Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card ) offered me options to take control of my finances by paying over time, through fixed-rate carve-out loans, which are supposed to be separate from purchases on the card, and paid over time at a fixed monthly rate with fixed monthly interest. They refer to these plans as My Chase Plans, and My Chase Loans.

Each month, they provide an " Interest Savings Balance, '' which includes the total amount of purchases the billing cycle, plus the monthly payments toward these " loans, '' which must be paid in order to avoid any ongoing interest charges on the purchase amounts -- which in my case are charged at 28.99 percent. ( An XXXX amount, but that's a separate issue. ) The first month after I took a My Chase Loan in the amount of {$9000.00}, I had over {$5000.00} in purchases ( travel, hotels, etc. ) on the card. I paid IN FULL the Interest Savings Balance. And INSTEAD of applying the amount of payment as promised, they applied the FULL AMOUNT to the " My Chase Loan, '' leaving me with a large balance of purchases at 28.99 percent. Their excuse for doing this ( after multiple calls and being placed on hold for extended periods of times ) was that I had a " zero-percent promotional interest rate '' on purchases at the time of my payment. A zero-percent promotion that EXPIRED the day AFTER I made my payment. That, my friends, is a classic bait-and-switch. One of the customer service agents basically agreed with my assessment, reversed the payment, and allowed me to make a payment again -- covering the full purchase balance, while incurring some interest on the days in between.

I thought that was the end of it until the next bill, in which the total " Interest Savings Balance '' was approx {$700.00} more than it should have been when I did the math. Lo and behold, it appears that they applied the total amount of a REFUND for a PURCHASE I MADE ( for an item that was returned in less than 24 hours, and which I DO NOT OWN -- it was a mistaken internet double-purchase through Interval Int. ) to the MY CHASE LOAN BALANCE, and insisted that I had to pay for the {$700.00} as part of my " Interest Savings Balance. '' Another Bait-and-Switch! It's atrocious, and frankly, illegal. And it's caused me financial hardship that is completely unnecessary, when I had made the agreement to pay the Loan balance over time, at a fixed rate, WITHOUT being penalized for continuing to use my card for purchases ( which, sometimes, get returned! ) The way it was explained to me is that even if I had made a {$5000.00} purchase that was refunded, they had a RIGHT to apply the refund in ANY AMOUNT to my loan balance, rather than to the actual purchase! How is that LEGAL??!! It makes no sense. It's bad business, and again, how is that legal? It's specifically against the agreement I made with CHASE when I signed up for the My Chase Loan as a way to better organize my debt. It is false advertising at the very least, and absolutely represents a bad-faith example of what credit cards do to consumers who are trying to do the right thing. It's unethical, and I know I'm not the only one its hurting.