Buyer beware with Synchrony Promotions

After dealing with so many timeshare salespeople, HSBC, and I forget who else, I started to come up with a list of questions to ask to try and uncover as much of what they're hiding as possible. HSBC had some goofiness with a promotion and I ended up having to call Guitar Center's corporate office and talking to someone to get them to honor what they promised. That was in maybe 2009. A couple years ago I was dealing with multiple car repairs either on SNAP finance or the CFNA Sun Devil card. And it would list each individual repair and how much I needed to pay by what date to not get stuck with all the deferred interest. With Synchrony, some silliness happened after I got the VSM-2 with these $159 monthly payments. They successfully took the auto-payment out of Chase once or twice. Then for some reason the payments started getting returned even though the money was there and Chase told me there was no problem on their end. Then they closed the account after it happened twice when it was their fault. Just shut off my Vintage King card a couple months after opening it. All the other Synchrony cards paid with the same Chase account were accepting the auto pay just fine. One of these days I have to talk to the guy at VK that my sales guy told me to talk to about this.

We really need to see reform with these banks. DLC Dems like the current president and the Republicans loosened things way too much during the Bush years and the industry did all kinds of dumb things to make short-term profit. It was detailed pretty good in The End Of Wall Street book. Just handing out credit like Halloween candy. Writing up employees that did credit checks on customers. Now they are stingy with credit and engaging in all sorts of schemes to try and thank us for bailing them out years ago after they sent the economy into a nosedive.

I once had a Capital One card back in the late 2000's and at the time it was around 10% interest rate.

In the 2008-ish crash I received a letter from them detailing how "in troubling times, we're here for you and we want you to have free balance transfers to help with all your financial hardships!". I didn't think much of it at the time because I didn't really have much of a balance and I also didn't have any outstanding balances elsewhere either.

About 6-8 weeks later I get another letter from Capital One. "We're raising the interest rate to 25% effective immediately. Your continued use of the card is acknowledging agreement with this change. If you do not agree, you have 30 days to pay the balance of the card off. On day 31 if you haven't paid the balance off, we'll enroll you in the new interest rate immediately".  I was pretty poor at the time, but I still paid off the balance and cancelled the card.

I think that's probably the scummiest thing I've ever heard of.  All those people probably piled on balances from other higher APR accounts and then get hammerfucked once it's all on the Capital One account. 

I'm 100% capitalist and it's undeniable that it's the economic system that's raised the most people out of abject poverty that has ever existed, but the government is full of so many cronies that have supported laws and rules that destroy any inkling of competition in the markets that lead to this kind of horseshit.

However, yes, people should read the fine print. They pretty much tell you right up front that they can change the APR at any moment for any reason, but OUR personal greed and desire for new and expensive items that we couldn't normally afford really compels us to overlook the possibility of these things happening. 

So while it's predatory, we totally allow it to happen because we want more than we can afford and we want it NOW.   The funny thing is the "predatory" description has been around as long as loaning money has been around and we all know that even though debt and credit are useful instruments, we know they can screw you overnight, and yet we still use them daily.

I also think that I'm seeing a lot of financial companies starting to call in the loans as if they see some reason that they need to..  I think we're headed for something big in the financial markets.  The "the economy is fine, there is nothing to see here" propaganda we're seeing in the news is starting to crack and I think once the dam breaks it's going to be bad.

If I knew they were gonna stick me with the Vig over a technicality is the problem I have. I'm paying MORE than they required each month...yet they allocated it with the express intent to not pay off the promo balances first. Here's something I don't understand. I made the $18xx purchase and it's listed as "48 equal payments no interest." So it has no accruing interest (unless I default - maybe that's the 40% one.) But I thought I was getting 48 months deferred interest. As long as it's paid off by the end of the promo - no interest. That's just sneaky to me. I can't even tell you how many times I've purchased things through Synchrony in 20 years - 50? 100? IDK...but it has been a lot. And I've NEVER had this issue. This is the first time I've ever heard of 48 months equal payments and no interest. Fucking love that...but it's always been pay it in 48 with a minimum payment and no interest...I can see what they're saying - I have to pay off the 6 month things first - these are three different purchases - and the way to do it without getting confused is to have three separate payments for each so you know whats going to what...but they don't offer that. And I was unaware that this was something I had to keep up with - as long as I was paying them back every month with extra to spare.

The other two purchases on my statement say "6 months deferred interest" and then shows the amount of interest that has accrued and you will owe if you don't pay by the end of the promo. My $600 ish purchase says I've accrued $80 in deferred interest - and that's what I'd have to pay which in the scheme of things ain't a big deal - it's the principle. But $80 on a $600 purchase is like 16% - so I have no idea where the 39.99% would come in...

I feel like this is one of those issues that people on both ends of the political spectrum can agree on. It's just pure greed.

Also, John... as shitty as it is that you had to go through this, I appreciate you making this thread. I feel like I've learned a few things and am gonna be extra careful moving forward. I've done a few of these types of loans but luckily haven't run into this yet. But I'll tread lightly now.

Well, that might actually be the best way to go. Talk your accountant or financial advisor? Which kinda reminds me, I never returned your PM from several weeks ago... 

I'll relay a similar tale of my own from about 20 odd years ago that changed my own financial outlook for life. Bear with me... and for the record, I am the black sheep in a family of hi-fi corporate finance guys. So hopefully this helps someone because right, most of this is predatory and barely legal, but legal nonetheless.

And like I think you and several others stated, they don't want "good customers" that pay off the balance in full every month. They want "bad customers" that make minimum & late payments so they can whack on the high interest & other fees. 

Really BIG part of the rub, and the reason that calling elected potatoes won't change any laws? They're already in cahoots with the banks. Foreign banks. 

The really dirty hidden truth is most of these private label credit cards are owned by foreign banks. And by "foreign" I really mean Chinese. 

HSBC = Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation 

Needless to say they certainly do NOT have anyone's best interests in mind. 

So about 20 odd years ago I had a guitardenter card and made a few of those "X months same as cash 0%" purchases. For the most part paid everything off super fast, well before the deadline. 

But at some point I had one long term purchase on there and made a second where, guess what? Even back then, payments were applied to whatever the most recent purchase was... 

So yes indeed I had an instance where buying boxes of strings & other BS on the card completely tripped up a multi-thousand dollar transaction that, with maybe one payment left triggered the accrued 27.99% interest going all the way back to day one. 

Balance went from maybe a few hundred to almost $2k overnight. 

At that point, with some family advice & help I paid the card off & cut it up. Done. Never again. 

From that day onward I've paid CASH for every piece of equipment that's been purchased. Studio has zero debt. Believe it or not! 

If I don't have the cash saved up I don't buy it. Pretty simple rule. Sometimes frustrating but 'ya know, there's always some other killer deal around the corner... and some things... some things are indeed worth waiting for. 

Another rub is that, again due to modern banking laws cash isn't really "cash" anymore. Anyone read nobtwiddler story months ago about buying a piece of property for cash? I just went through that whole same damn scenario. Almost to the tee. 

But again the rules & laws aren't changing for the better. And its not the elected potatoes that are going to do anything. Mostly because it doesn't affect them and lets face it... right now the head potato running the show is basically an alzheimers patient. I saw the same things in my Dad towards the end of his life. 

Take care of yourselves out there. 

Can I like this twice? My father died of Alzheimers 20 years ago and my mother has dementia at the moment. That staring into space look? I've seen that many, many times. It's actually elder abuse if you ask me...The wife allowing this is just mind blowing...Edith Wilson comes to mind.

Anyway - yeah - I've often wondered, "Wonder why they do these 48 month no interest things? How do they make any money?" Because I definitely always paid mine off well before and didn't accrue interest. Well, I guess this is the answer. They "generate" fees by convoluted allocations. I think you said yours messed up because your payments were going to pay off the first ending promo first. That's the opposite of what happened to me. Not that I think they've got people monitoring accounts to see who they can screw, but just WHAT is the freaking policy? Mine paid towards the 48 month one at about $40 per month...so that means the rest of it was going towards the first promo ending which was the $300 one...but I still can't figure out why the balance on the $600 purchase didn't come down more than $60...
A personal loan is probably stupid - I can just pay it off in the 48 months with zero interest.

If you can do a loc with your bank, do it, at least you have a significant financial relationship with you?

You remember my $16,000 tax debt up here, the first nasty call I had with the federal officials being bureaucratic, I said fuck it and paid the entire debt off with my loc.

I look at it every month. I don't trust them, so I always like to make sure no funny business is happening, and always keep abreast of any purchases which are coming due.

Right. I knew my payoff dates too…and I paid more than the amount to satisfy those payoffs…but they weren’t being applied to those.

From back in the old days when GE Captal was king of the private credit cards that every store had, the whole “ special 90 days free financing for a limited time “ was a scam, most retailers ran it that way because they felt their sales force was to dumb to use but it was always available, I could at anytime offer it to close a deal !

The best way to deal with this is to complain to the dealers who use Synchrony. If they know they are losing customers/ sales because people feel they have been burned, they will look elsewhere.

Maybe on their website they have but on their app, the promo balances are at the bottom easily seen. I use them for dental work as well as gear. I have  a Heiserman 47 AND an Upton 251 in my mouth.

Moral here is be true to your teeth, or they will be false to you.