Consumer complaint received 2024-02-23
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement — Card was charged for something you did not purchase with the card
Company: Bread Financial Holdings, Inc. (NC)

Sephora and Bread Financial/Comenity Bank running a number of scams through their Sephora Visa Credit Card program , including prohibiting online account registration to prevent customers ' easy access to information regarding their account ( particularly, evidence to dispute false charges ), fraudulent charges & fees, false assurances from customer support, and failing to close a number of customers ' accounts when requested without communicating that failure to them. 

For context, it looks like Bread Financial and its subsidiary Comenity Bank have faced lawsuits as far back as XXXX, one of which ended in a substantial settlement. Similar headlines are dated as recently as XXXX and XXXX, so it seems the past resolutions did not sufficiently prevent the scams from resuming. 

I can only speak on my experience from XX/XX/XXXX through today. In XXXX, I repeatedly attempted to use my new Sephora Visa credit card to register for online account access. I've attached a screenshot of the notification myself and numerous other customers have received upon trying to register for online account access. While the platform is able to find my information based on the account number, zip code, and last four digits of my SSN provided, I'm not able to continue the registration process. However, you can see your bill total and pay it without online account access via XXXX, so I paid my bill and decided to use my own general-use debit or credit card going forward. 

In XXXX, I started receiving calls about my outstanding balance. Since I hadn't made a purchase with that card since the one I made when opening the account, I was surprised. I tried to register for online account access again so that I could see an itemized bill, but got the same notification. I called customer service and was shuffled back and forth between Sephora and Comenity 's customer service departments with no answers to be found regarding the online account issue. Then, I called Comenity customer service again to pay my bill and have my account closed. I was assured that the account would be closed, but I didn't receive any confirmation of this via mail or email. I did receive confirmation that my bill had been paid in full. 

Work and the holiday season got busy, and I didn't think about this for a few months. Last week, I was checking my banking app and realized my credit score had fallen significantly. I couldn't think of anything that could have negatively affected my score, so I took a closer look. There are multiple late fees on my Sephora Visa account despite me closing the account via phone in XXXX, paying my bill in full, and not making any further purchases with the card. I paid my bill again today via XXXX, but I know this will just happen again over the next couple months. It's clear from all the identical reviews to my own that this is a scam both Sephora and Bread Financial/Comenity are aware of and intentionally continuing. 

During my most recent call to Comenity this afternoon, the agent maintained that they had no idea what's going on with the online account registration process at first. I was instructed to " try again on Monday '' to register. I did not mention the outstanding, false fees, because that didn't have any positive outcome last time I did. I did, however, state that the issue had been happening since XXXX at least, therefore there was a very small likelihood that it would be fixed by Monday and indicated to me they were aware of the issue prior, despite the initial denial. She acknowledged that they've been " working on this issue for awhile. '' With all of the reviews across several different platforms ( Sephora XXXX, XXXX XXXX, XXXX ), there is absolutely no way these companies are unaware. Please help.