topic Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!? in Credit Cards

Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 19:25:02 GMT

So, this is a bit concerning for somebody with a large Synchrony portfolio and perfect payment standing:

As you can see, I scheduled a payment on the night of 12/15 to post on 12/16 (which is my exact due date;12/15 - one day prior to my due date - wasn't available as an option), yet my account was assessed a late fee.

I immediately called the # on the back of my card, and after battling the automated phone system for 3 minutes, I told it to connect me to a rep regarding a late payment fee. After wasting more of my time telling me about the post-call survey, the system abruptly disconnected me. Awesome.

So I call back and give a different reason. I make it to a rep who is very concerned and reassuring about the situation, saying that the system made a mistake and he won't even need to take action for the late fee to be reversed on its own since I made the payment on time.

He seems to think at first that I'm concerned about them reporting me 30 days late, which isn't my concern at all as I never anticipate being 30 days late on anything. I explain I'm concerned about the false record of a late payment being on file internally with Synchrony as I have many other cards w/ them in excellent standing with a large amount of credit available. He very kindly took the time to write a message to their back office explaining the situation and how alarming it is for a customer with excellent credit habits to ever see a late fee posted to their account after making a payment on time, and apologized for the inconvience.

Has anybody had this happen before on a Synchrony account? It freaked me out not having seen any kind of late fee in many years... I hope somebody on their end fixes the system to never do this to anybody again.

edit: it's been established that this is normal for Synchrony for same-as-due-date payments. I hope this detailed account and transaction example will be most helpful to the next person that has this happen.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 07:58:36 GMT

It looks like you missed the cutoff time. As an example, some lenders require that you must make your payment before a certain hour in"their" time zone, not necessarily yours, for it to be considered paid on that date. As an example, for my Capital One payment to be posted, if I make it on the due date, it must be initiated before 7pm EST. To me that is before 4pm Pacific Time.

Edit: I see you got some help via a CSR.

Everyone has their own budgets. I avoid these close calls whenever possible, by making a payment as soon as I see a bill due, if not before. .

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 08:01:29 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
It looks like you missed the cutoff time. As an example, some lenders require that you must make your payment before a certain hour in"their" time zone, not necessarily yours, for it to be considered paid on that date. As an example, for my Capital One payment to be posted, if I make it on the due date, it must be initiated before 7pm EST. To me that is before 4pm Pacific Time.

Nope. As stated in my post, I requested the payment on the night of 12/15 with a pament date of 12/16 which is the official due date of my account. I wasn't even one minute late or past any cut off, of which the CSR reassured me.

I even received email confirmation on the night of 12/15.

What you're describing would only be the case if I scheduled the payment the night of 12/16 with a payment date of 12/17.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 08:04:41 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
It looks like you missed the cutoff time. As an example, some lenders require that you must make your payment before a certain hour in"their" time zone, not necessarily yours, for it to be considered paid on that date. As an example, for my Capital One payment to be posted, if I make it on the due date, it must be initiated before 7pm EST. To me that is before 4pm Pacific Time.
Nope. As stated in my post, I requested the payment on the night of 12/15 with a pament date of 12/16 which is the official due date of my account. I wasn't even one minute late or past any cut off, of which the CSR reassured me.

I even received email confirmation on the night of 12/15.

What you're describing would only be the case if I scheduled the payment the night of 12/16 with a payment date of 12/17.

Ahhh, the due date was the 16th, not the 15th. I apologize, for I didn't read it right. Yep, they messed up.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 08:08:51 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
It looks like you missed the cutoff time. As an example, some lenders require that you must make your payment before a certain hour in"their" time zone, not necessarily yours, for it to be considered paid on that date. As an example, for my Capital One payment to be posted, if I make it on the due date, it must be initiated before 7pm EST. To me that is before 4pm Pacific Time.
Nope. As stated in my post, I requested the payment on the night of 12/15 with a pament date of 12/16 which is the official due date of my account. I wasn't even one minute late or past any cut off, of which the CSR reassured me.

I even received email confirmation on the night of 12/15.

What you're describing would only be the case if I scheduled the payment the night of 12/16 with a payment date of 12/17.
Ahhh, the due date was the 16th, not the 15th. I apologize, for I didn't read it right. Yep, they messed up.

No worries. I'm definitely not one to cry foul when I might be in the wrong. In this case, I was doing what anybody who manages the number of credit cards I do does and making payments and micropayments all of the time; in this instance, right on the due date. I wouldn't normally carry a balance on this card anyway, but I decided to shift funds around this month to optimize my wife's util at the expense of paying interest.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 08:29:58 GMT

My Bestbuy card was good for doing that, but a day later an auto reversal for the late fee would go into effect and mind you I was on auto payment when it would do it. Sometimes computers are stupid.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 08:38:49 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
My Bestbuy card was good for doing that, but a day later an auto reversal for the late fee would go into effect and mind you I was on auto payment when it would do it. Sometimes computers are stupid.

Yep. I'm a software engineer by trade, so I know all about silly computer bugs lol.

My concern is because of how glitchy their systems obviously are, what's keeping that "late payment" from causing me CLI denial or CLD/AA in the future? I did document my concerns and the call in case that ever happens.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

UncleB — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 10:15:27 GMT

I recall reading another thread a while ago where somebody had the exact same experience with an Amazon store account (also Synchrony). They also called the CSR, and were told the exact same thing. In their case, the fee was auto-reversed by the system, no intervention was necessary.

I completely understand your concern, though, especially with Synchrony being known for AA across all accounts when you have an issue with one. I agree that they really need to do something about this - at a minimum, their software folks could come up with a way to 'hide' the fee for a day for those cases where it's auto-reversed. For the cases where it's not auto-reversed (a genuine late payment) having the fee hidden for a day woudn't make a difference.

I'm glad you got a CSR who seemed to care, though... it's nice when they actually listen, and perhaps the notes they took down won't fall on deaf ears!

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

JagerBombs89 — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 13:02:36 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
My Bestbuy card was good for doing that, but a day later an auto reversal for the late fee would go into effect and mind you I was on auto payment when it would do it. Sometimes computers are stupid.
Yep. I'm a software engineer by trade, so I know all about silly computer bugs lol.

My concern is because of how glitchy their systems obviously are, what's keeping that "late payment" from causing me CLI denial or CLD/AA in the future? I did document my concerns and the call in case that ever happens.

I wonder how many late fees were "accidently" accessed to other accounts and no one caught it...

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

alexl22 — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 14:01:24 GMT

I forgot what synch account it was that I read it but it specifically states if you make a payment on the due date and are assessed a late fee it will automatically be credited back to your account. Now if this holds true accross all accounts I have no idea!

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Tryingtogetbetter — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:03:04 GMT

Same thing happened to my Amazon account. I made my payment the morning of my due date but the payment didn't post until 2 business days later. I was also hit with a late fee and when I called the CSR she told me that the payment was received on time but sometimes the payment doesn't post to the account for up to two business days so the system automatically issues the late fee. Nothing to worry about, once the payment posted the late fee was returned, no damage done. Now I just make my payment a few days before the due date just to avoid this in the future.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

redbeard — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 15:09:59 GMT

Yeah, my Dell account used to do the same thing. Make a payment on the due date, it would tell me I was late and add a late fee. It would then auto-reverse about 2 days later.

Not sure why lenders do it this way, but it seems to be a common practice.

Dan

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

DeeBee78 — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 18:45:55 GMT

This thread gets posted every month.

Every Synchrony card has the same disclaimer: If you make your payment on the due date, your account will temporarily be assessed a late fee. The late fee will automatically be reversed.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 19:23:38 GMT

@DeeBee78 wrote:
This thread gets posted every month.

Every Synchrony card has the same disclaimer: If you make your payment on the due date, your account will temporarily be assessed a late fee. The late fee will automatically be reversed.

K, well I wasn't able to find anything on this forum that was well-documented so I thought I'd share.

I think my account is detailed enough to actually help the next person who encounters this versus some more vague mentions I saw.

Again, I'm searching the Google index of this site and I see a lot of accounts of people being actually late and getting late fees reversed, and a couple with the same exact situation but not enough information presented in the first post to be a comprehensive resource.

Your post was really constructive, so thanks for that.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

DeeBee78 — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 19:25:51 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@DeeBee78 wrote:
This thread gets posted every month.

Every Synchrony card has the same disclaimer: If you make your payment on the due date, your account will temporarily be assessed a late fee. The late fee will automatically be reversed.

K, well I wasn't able to find anything on this forum that was well-documented so I thought I'd share.

I think my account is detailed enough to actually help the next person who encounters this versus some more vague mentions I saw.

Your post was really constructive, so thanks for that.

Literally the first three results when searching the forums for "Late Fee"

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Help-Synchrony-Late-Fees/m-p/4122288/highlight/true#M1162173?filter=labels%2Clocation&location=forum-board%3Acreditcard&q=Late+Fee

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Late-fee-for-paying-on-due-date/m-p/4021450/highlight/true#M1129596?filter=labels%2Clocation&location=forum-board%3Acreditcard&q=Late+Fee

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Walmart-charging-a-LATE-FEE/m-p/3657342/highlight/true#M998686?filter=labels%2Clocation&location=forum-board%3Acreditcard&q=Late+Fee

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 19:28:26 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@DeeBee78 wrote:
This thread gets posted every month.

Every Synchrony card has the same disclaimer: If you make your payment on the due date, your account will temporarily be assessed a late fee. The late fee will automatically be reversed.

K, well I wasn't able to find anything on this forum that was well-documented so I thought I'd share.

I think my account is detailed enough to actually help the next person who encounters this versus some more vague mentions I saw.

Again, I'm searching the Google index of this site and I see a lot of accounts of people being actually late and getting late fees reversed, and a couple with the same exact situation but not enough information presented in the first post to be a comprehensive resource.

Your post was really constructive, so thanks for that.

Thanks for sharing. Something similiar happened to me, as well. (Sometimes I have problems locating previous posts, too. No harm. No foul.)

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 19:30:20 GMT

@DeeBee78 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@DeeBee78 wrote:
This thread gets posted every month.

Every Synchrony card has the same disclaimer: If you make your payment on the due date, your account will temporarily be assessed a late fee. The late fee will automatically be reversed.

K, well I wasn't able to find anything on this forum that was well-documented so I thought I'd share.

I think my account is detailed enough to actually help the next person who encounters this versus some more vague mentions I saw.

Your post was really constructive, so thanks for that.
Literally the first three results when searching the forums for "Late Fee"

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Help-Synchrony-Late-Fees/m-p/4122288/highlight/true#M1162173?filter=labels%2Clocation&location=forum-board%3Acreditcard&q=Late+Fee

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Late-fee-for-paying-on-due-date/m-p/4021450/highlight/true#M1129596?filter=labels%2Clocation&location=forum-board%3Acreditcard&q=Late+Fee

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Walmart-charging-a-LATE-FEE/m-p/3657342/highlight/true#M998686?filter=labels%2Clocation&location=forum-board%3Acreditcard&q=Late+Fee

You're being so useful.

If my original post didn't provide a detailed account, I could see your point. But two of the examples you posted didn't provide any real content in the first post for future forum members to see.

I made the effort to call up Synchrony and actually had the rep escalate the issue to their back office. I could hear him typing the message right there on the phone. Regardless of your rude response, I would still like to share with everybody that I actually *did* something about this system glitch instead of just bitching about it.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 19:32:24 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@DeeBee78 wrote:
This thread gets posted every month.

Every Synchrony card has the same disclaimer: If you make your payment on the due date, your account will temporarily be assessed a late fee. The late fee will automatically be reversed.

K, well I wasn't able to find anything on this forum that was well-documented so I thought I'd share.

I think my account is detailed enough to actually help the next person who encounters this versus some more vague mentions I saw.

Again, I'm searching the Google index of this site and I see a lot of accounts of people being actually late and getting late fees reversed, and a couple with the same exact situation but not enough information presented in the first post to be a comprehensive resource.

Your post was really constructive, so thanks for that.
Thanks for sharing. Something similiar happened to me, as well. (Sometimes I have problems locating previous posts, too. No harm. No foul.)

Thank you.

Regardless of whether I found an old thread, I still wanted to share my own account as the way Synchrony's system worked honestly offended me. So according to this other rude poster, I would either be damned for bumping an old thread, or damned for reposting something that is apparently common knowledge.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 19:34:34 GMT

And, to further my point that I'm trying to go above and beyond what other discussions of this phenomenon brought up, has anybody experienced AA/CLD or CLI denial because of a phantom late fee/late payment record as described?

That was my only real concern as $25 doesn't mean anything to me versus keeping my Synchrony accounts. When I searched for such discussion, I found nothing.

So again, I think my thread is justified.

Re: Synchrony Late Fee, What the!?

DeeBee78 — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 19:38:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@DeeBee78 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@DeeBee78 wrote:
This thread gets posted every month.

Every Synchrony card has the same disclaimer: If you make your payment on the due date, your account will temporarily be assessed a late fee. The late fee will automatically be reversed.

K, well I wasn't able to find anything on this forum that was well-documented so I thought I'd share.

I think my account is detailed enough to actually help the next person who encounters this versus some more vague mentions I saw.

Your post was really constructive, so thanks for that.
Literally the first three results when searching the forums for "Late Fee"

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Help-Synchrony-Late-Fees/m-p/4122288/highlight/true#M1162173?filter=labels%2Clocation&location=forum-board%3Acreditcard&q=Late+Fee

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Late-fee-for-paying-on-due-date/m-p/4021450/highlight/true#M1129596?filter=labels%2Clocation&location=forum-board%3Acreditcard&q=Late+Fee

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Walmart-charging-a-LATE-FEE/m-p/3657342/highlight/true#M998686?filter=labels%2Clocation&location=forum-board%3Acreditcard&q=Late+Fee
You're being so useful.

If my original post didn't provide a detailed account, I could see your point. But two of the examples you posted didn't provide any real content in the first post for future forum members to see.

I made the effort to call up Synchrony and actually had the rep escalate the issue to their back office. I could hear him typing the message right there on the phone. Regardless of your rude response, I would still like to share with everybody that I actually *did* something about this system glitch instead of just bitching about it.

All three of those posts include anecdotal evidence of this exact same situation (Late fee being charged when making payment on the due date). Maybe you should re-read them, instead of mistaking my curtness for rudeness.