Consumer complaint received 2025-10-17 00:00:00
Product: Payday loan, title loan, personal loan, or advance loan — Installment loan
Issue: Charged fees or interest you didn't expect — 
Company: SYNCHRONY FINANCIAL
State: TX

Complaint narrative:
I took out a personal installment plan on PayPal in XXXX of XXXX, for a loan over 24 months with 0 interest for {$30.00} a month called an Easy Payment plan ; first off, for some reason, it was changed on PayPal 's end as two separate loans, so it ended up being {$60.00} a month ( deceptive, but i continued to pay it along with some pay-in-four plans that I paid prior to their due dates ). Over the course of the year since I took out this loan, they have gone through financial gymnastics to try to charge interest on what they can outside of the terms of the loan agreement, which is called the non-promotional balance.

They have a system for which they allocate payments to first, which means every payment goes toward what they consider promotional balances first, non-promotional balances second ; they split payments between both balances to satisfy their terms UNLESS the customer ( myself ) specifies what I want the payments allocated to. I have been doing so consistently for months -- In XX/XX/XXXX, after going through many agents to get this information which was NOT SPECIFIED IN THEIR TERMS OF THE LOAN AND EXACT PAYMENT AMOUNTS WERE MADE! -- the non-promotional balance interest that kept accumulating was supposed to have been resolved and they have the chat logs/call logs to prove this ( they would not give me this information when I asked for it, simply to call another manager ).

For the easy payments, the money is usually auto-drafted from my personal checking account, which is fine. I had other pay-in-four plans that I also struggled to resolve with them over the past year, through many headaches and assurances that my payments were allocated correctly and payments made to i don't even know where anymore with unfair interest and supposedly non-promotional balances charged on every billing statement. Their own terms specify that if you make a payment toward their pay-in-fours 1 month before it is due, that it will allocate it automatically to that plan, but this is NOT true either, they split many of my payments to fulfill their desired interest charge to my account. 

Despite all of these issues, I paid off what they considered the non-promotional balances and all pay-in-four plans in XX/XX/XXXX and have had several assurances on behalf of the support agents on there that i had no more balance left on the account both in Live Chats that they have recordings of, and on the phone. So to PayPal Credit, I should have only had the easy payment plan on my credit account. 

In XXXX, I mistakenly charged the credit account before my easy payment auto-pay went through on the XXXX for about {$94.00} ( this was after they had also added a mystery amount of $ XXXXsomething dollars, which they said was a non-promotional balance before I got a manager to remove the undue charge after I added up what I had charged on the account ). 

On XX/XX/XXXX to XXXX I contacted PayPal Credit through live chat and was assured that as of the end of XXXX, I had no amount left on the non-promotional balance. This is the chat log from the supervisor assuring me that I had NO non-promotional balance on the account left : # XXXX. 

In XXXX, I let PayPal draft my account as usual to fulfill the terms on my end of the easy payment plan over 24 months. However, they did not apply my payment made towards my balance on the account in the month of XXXX, and so in XXXX when my easy payment of {$60.00} went through it was not made towards my loans that I have with them, but to fulfill their other balance that I had already paid in full towards on the XXXX. 

XXXX charged me interest on that non-promotional amount in XXXX, and in XXXX, they charged me interest on that non-promotional balance, AND split my monthly payment to fulfill the minimum amount for both non-promotional balance AND the easy payment plan, which is supposedly specified on their mysterious terms that I didn't know about until I frequently contacted them to fix these discrepancies. 

Right now in XXXX, they have my account listed with a " Amount to avoid Standard and Deferred Interest '' of {$75.00}, which should not even exist via the terms of their easy payment plan loan terms including the non-promotional balance that was supposed to have been cleared in XXXX, so they keep increasing or adding what i owe on the " easy payments '' to the hypothetical " Non-promotional '' balance which has been cleared repeatedly by splitting my payments repeatedly so I keep paying more than I should every month, and i don't get to enjoy the terms of the payment plan at all because i keep having to pay non-promo and promo balances non-stop! 

I asked them what I can do to resolve this and they told me that I couldn't fix this and all they could do is file a complaint. It is not my fault this issue happened and still, i am the one punished for it, and it is just really unfair to me as the consumer because they TELL me to do it the way they want and even when I do, it is still messed up and it has been a year already. They told me that my {$61.00} payments will be split into one promo plan for {$23.00}, into the lesser promo plan for {$7.00} ( so they keep their FAKE LIE THAT IT IS {$30.00} A MONTH ) and {$30.00} into the non-promotional balance that never ends!!! 

I am tired of arguing non-stop with them over their own rules that they pick and choose to apply or deny outright even though other agents assure me those exist until i ask for the issue to be escalated and as of today XX/XX/XXXX it is NOT resolved. They are deceiving consumers into picking these payment plans of convenience and don't even bother to help when they make mistakes on my credit account. Just assurances and " trust me, I applied it to the balance '' WHEN THEY DON'T EVEN DO THAT!!

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