topic Synchrony Help! in Credit Cards

Synchrony Help!

Indycoltsfan — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 10:45:08 GMT

I accidently forgot a payment on November 25th to Synchrony for my Sams Club card. I have a $20,000 limit. When I received the email stating that my payment was due, I noted that the minimum was quite high. I logged in and realized I forgot my November payment. The credit line has dropped to $5600. Is this temporary? If I call and explain about my oversight, does anyone think that my original credit line will be restored? It will take a huge hit on my utilization. Is Synchrony reasonable? Thanks!!

Re: Synchrony Help!

AverageJoesCredit — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 12:01:00 GMT

You can try but i doubt it. I would call and explain but worse case they balance chase , best case in a few months call in to CS and request another cli. They have been known to increase a card again. UncleB is a classic case of that.

Re: Synchrony Help!

Loquat — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 12:30:13 GMT

OP for what it's worth, my wife was recently late on her Ebates Mastercard. A couple of months ago she went out for lunch and forgot her wallet back at the office. She keeps the Ebates stashed in her car for situations of such. Since she hardly ever uses said card unless it's an emergency, she forgot to log in and make the payment (completely ignoring the fact that I always advocate for setting up minumum payment via auto pay to avoid situations of such but that's another topic for a different thread). Nonetheless she was late. Past due on a little over 6 bucks.

Not only did Synchrony leave her $15k limit in tact, they actually reversed the late payment fee. She's had the account for a couple of years with very little activity. I was actually shocked myself. With that being said...call and ask. The worst that can happen is they say no.

Good luck to you!

Re: Synchrony Help!

PointsBonus — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 12:53:46 GMT

In my opinion, your limit dropping probably does not have to do with the late payment, it might be a perfect storm where something negative posted on your credit report at the same time. I encourage you to check your recent credit (if you haven’t already done so).
Normally in my experience 1st late payment, they are nice enough to remove the late fee and leave everything alone.

Now if you missed it by like 32-45 days and it already reported to you bureau ... the late fee and the credit limit is the least of the concerns.

Hope this helps.

Re: Synchrony Help!

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 14:26:15 GMT

Oh no! Give Chat a try. You never know. 😉

Re: Synchrony Help!

Indycoltsfan — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 15:21:00 GMT

I called and they removed the late fee of $27 - however, the CS rep could not restore my credit limit. I paid 2 days after the billing cycle ended, so there is no 30 day mark on my credit. I am very diligent about my credit monitoring and all three bureaus are above 740. She cited that they did a credit review and felt that I had too much credit available across all my lines. Oh well, I will keep trudging on. Costco is closer anyway!

Thanks for all of your input - it is greatly appreciated. I love this forum!

Re: Synchrony Help!

jbsilva21 — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 15:29:07 GMT

Synchrony can be skittish at times and very generous at others. They balance chased me on a couple of cards for a 30 day late that was 9 months earlier. However, I believe that they can be forgiving with some time and distance from whatever scared them. They slashed my Amazon account from $3500 to $840, which I don't even need that much on Amazon since I can use my Amex MR points to make purchases.

Re: Synchrony Help!

JR_TX — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 16:08:34 GMT

Sorry to hear about the CLD OP.
So they CLD’d you due to too much available over all credit... I think that few days late is what triggered a manual review.
There’s plenty of fish out there so don’t worry too much about it. If they balance chase you then I would just go ahead and pay off and cut my ties with them. But that’s just me and my prideful opinion.

Re: Synchrony Help!

jbsilva21 — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 16:38:33 GMT

@JR_TX wrote:
Sorry to hear about the CLD OP.
So they CLD’d you due to too much available over all credit... I think that few days late is what triggered a manual review.
There’s plenty of fish out there so don’t worry too much about it. If they balance chase you then I would just go ahead and pay off and cut my ties with them. But that’s just me and my prideful opinion.

Agreed. I think once I stopped taking it so personally since it was because of a mistake I had made, I realized that other issuers liked me and so I put my money and time to those. I kept wondering how some folks on here had worse credit that I at time and were getting approved for "easy" cards with nice limits and I struggled to just get a secured card to unsecure. Synchrony is good for some and not for others....including me. Lol

Re: Synchrony Help!

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 17:08:50 GMT

Even though the late fee was waived, look out for penalty APR being applied.

Time to setup autopay for all your cards, if not for the full statement balance (if you're a transactor) at least for the minimum (if you're carrying balance), you can still make manual payments or edit the autopay if you need to. If it happened here, it's just a matter of time it happens again if you're managing everything manually, life can be unpredictable.

Re: Synchrony Help!

UncleB — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 20:27:38 GMT

@Indycoltsfan wrote:
I called and they removed the late fee of $27 - however, the CS rep could not restore my credit limit. I paid 2 days after the billing cycle ended, so there is no 30 day mark on my credit. I am very diligent about my credit monitoring and all three bureaus are above 740. She cited that they did a credit review and felt that I had too much credit available across all my lines. Oh well, I will keep trudging on. Costco is closer anyway!

Thanks for all of your input - it is greatly appreciated. I love this forum!

The info provided by the others is right on the money.

Being CLD'ed to $5600 actually isn't all that bad; I know it's not $20k, but it could have been worse.

The good news is that if you just hang on, once some time goes by they will be willing to grant CLIs again. You might not (or might?) get back to the full $20k all at once, but you will see increases again. It will take some time, though.

Hang in there!

Re: Synchrony Help!

AverageJoesCredit — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 20:46:19 GMT

In the new Sync i am finding your entire credit limits seem to becoming a factor in getting more cli from them . Im like 0-10 lol in sll my last Credit Solutions requests.

Re: Synchrony Help!

UncleB — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 20:50:21 GMT

@AverageJoesCredit wrote:
In the new Sync i am finding your entire credit limits seem to becoming a factor in getting more cli from them . Im like 0-10 lol in sll my last Credit Solutions requests.

Yeah, while still more generous than many others they definitely aren't the candy dish they once were.

Re: Synchrony Help!

jbsilva21 — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 20:56:11 GMT

Maybe not in this particular scenario, but I think when it was low hanging fruit people got a bunch of their cards and increased exposure. I am guilty of this as well. I had several of their cards and used them and PIF. Maybe they get scared when they see a lot of available credit just sitting there? I only have 3 accounts with them now instead of 8.

Re: Synchrony Help!

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 21:02:20 GMT

@jbsilva21 wrote:
Maybe not in this particular scenario, but I think when it was low hanging fruit people got a bunch of their cards and increased exposure. I am guilty of this as well. I had several of their cards and used them and PIF. Maybe they get scared when they see a lot of available credit just sitting there? I only have 3 accounts with them now instead of 8.

Well of course they get scared - there was an article just this morning in fact about how loose lending is starting to show with people not making payments and banks are starting to decline new customers, slash limits, deny CLIs, and close inactive lines as more people start to pay late or not at all.

They would rather not have people have the ability to charge up thousands of debt then not pay it.

Re: Synchrony Help!

jbsilva21 — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 21:10:50 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@jbsilva21 wrote:
Maybe not in this particular scenario, but I think when it was low hanging fruit people got a bunch of their cards and increased exposure. I am guilty of this as well. I had several of their cards and used them and PIF. Maybe they get scared when they see a lot of available credit just sitting there? I only have 3 accounts with them now instead of 8.
Well of course they get scared - there was an article just this morning in fact about how loose lending is starting to show with people not making payments and banks are starting to decline new customers, slash limits, deny CLIs, and close inactive lines as more people start to pay late or not at all.

They would rather not have people have the ability to charge up thousands of debt then not pay it.

Which I do understand. For me it was a learning experience. Now I only get cards that I plan to keep.

Re: Synchrony Help!

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 22:00:11 GMT

Exactly. When one bank starts to make you feel like you're failing at credit others will give you unexpected cli's and make you rethink your position.😊

Re: Synchrony Help!

AverageJoesCredit — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 22:02:15 GMT

My golden rule with Synchrony....PAY IN FULL!. I dont care how much credit limit they have or would give me, anything goes south, ie blue envelope, or cld, or whatever, i want the ability to just cut ties immediately lol.

Re: Synchrony Help!

Loquat — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 22:39:44 GMT

@AverageJoesCredit wrote:
My golden rule with Synchrony....PAY IN FULL!. I dont care how much credit limit they have or would give me, anything goes south, ie blue envelope, or cld, or whatever, i want the ability to just cut ties immediately lol.

This and the fact that unless you're under some promotional financing their standard interest rates are atrocious. Exposure or not, carrying a balance with Synchrony will certainly put you on a financial diet as you'll lose all your money in interest to them.

Re: Synchrony Help!

Indycoltsfan — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 14:50:45 GMT

Update: The fall out of the credit decrease has hit my credit reports according to myfico. My utilization for the card skyrocketed from 22% to 93% and the impact of my credit scores are as follows:

EQ: decreased 10 points from 743 to 733

TU: decreased 8 points from 748 to 740

EX: decreased 16 points from 744 to 728

And note: the payment was not a 30 day late - getting hit on the utilization % - can fix that when I pay it off next week and get these points back.

Thank you everyone for your input and advice - you rock!