Consumer complaint received 2026-03-24 00:00:00
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments — Problem during payment process
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: IL

Complaint narrative:
I am filing a complaint regarding improper payment allocation on my CareCredit credit card account, which involves a deferred interest promotional balance set to expire on XX/XX/XXXX. Also known as Synchrony Bank, this company has engaged in questionable behaviors in the final billing cycles before promotional expiration. On XX/XX/XXXX, I made a payment of {$130.00}. Because I am within the final billing cycles before the promotional expiration date, payments exceeding the minimum should be applied to the promotional balance to prevent the accrual of deferred interest. However, this did not occur. Only {$100.00} of my XX/XX/XXXX payment was applied to the promotional balance that expires in less than a month ; notably, that account had a remaining balance of {$220.00} and {$260.00} in deferred interest as of the payment date ( See XX/XX/XXXX Statement ). {$30.00} from that payment was " automatically '' applied to a second promotional balance on my account that will not expire until XX/XX/XXXX. This is the second time this issue has occurred and required corrective action in a short time frame. I had to call CareCredit 's customer service line to request the reallocation of a {$270.00} payment made on XX/XX/XXXX. The balance was set to expire XX/XX/XXXX, but they routed {$66.00} to a different, less urgent account. Only upon my specific request would they adjust the payment. Based on my experience, payments made in the final billing cycles before promotional expiration have not been consistently applied to the most time-sensitive balance. This pattern increases the likelihood that a balance remains after the expiration date and puts consumers at risk of accruing deferred interest despite making timely payments above the minimum. Today, upon seeing that my most urgent promotional balance did not decrease proportionally with my payment, I contacted customer service via chat to have it adjusted. The representative initially resisted correcting the issue and provided inaccurate or misleading information about the handling of my payment. It was only after I requested the representatives full name and supervisor information that the payment was suddenly able to be reallocated. Even then, I was told the correction would take 2448 hours to process and up to 12 billing cycles to appear on my statement. This delay is concerning given that my promotional period expires on XX/XX/XXXX, and improper allocation or delays could result in significant deferred interest being charged. ( See CareCredit Chat Transcript - XX/XX/XXXX ). This situation required over 30 minutes of my time to resolve and should not have required escalation for what is a standard and federally governed payment allocation requirement. I am concerned about a pattern of improper payment allocation and the initial refusal to correct the issue, which could cause financial harm if not caught and challenged by the consumer. Attached you will find a copy of the chat transcript from earlier today, as well as my last four months of bank statements for this 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