Some potentially amazing news on all Synchrony Bank credit cards(because of me)

[MikeyMagic]

Hey all,

I just wanted to let you all know some news I got yesterday from the executive resolution specialist at Synchrony Bank. We spoke first about 4 weeks ago because I had reached out to the President of Synchrony's office to complain about my new Amazon Secured Card reporting balances to the credit bureaus after every purchase. It was bringing my credit score down and ruining my utilization and I was annoyed.

Anyways, she credited me $25 for what happened, apologized and told me she would reach out to the IT team to see why it was happening.

So about 2 weeks ago I made a few purchases on the card and it once again reported my balance to the bureaus. I spoke with her again and she told me she should get back to me this week.

Well, yesterday she called me and told me that someone high up in IT thinks they have discovered the problem as to why my card and so many others get random balances reported by Synchrony all the time. She told me it had something to do with an extra "byte" and to make a long story short, she thinks that IT fixed the problem for good!! Not just for me and my situation but she told me that there should be no more random balances reported for everyone with Synchrony Cards!!

We're gonna see what happens when I make my next purchase or 2 and see if it reports to the bureaus but she is hopeful it won't anymore. She told me from now on it will only report after the statement closes.

And she told me if this is indeed FIXED it is because of me and my persistance of calling her as well as leaving a message on the President's voicemail. She told me he was upset this was happening to me on a Secured Card as well as lots of other card holders she pointed out to him reading forums.

So i am crossing my fingers this random reporting by Synchrony Bank will finally come to an end and I'm happy I got this to happen.

Just wanted you all to know, Happy Thanksgiving!!

[BuckyB]

Well that's pretty **bleep** remarkable if true.  Though I wouldn't hold my breath that they figured it out completely.

Also, if true, it's pretty disturbing that their multi-million-dollar IT department couldn't figure out something was wrong with their multi-billion-dollar payment network without some random customer (no offense) calling them repeatedly and demanding that they look into it.

Then again it is Synchrony...😬

[SouthJamaica]

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@MikeyMagic wrote:

Hey all,

I just wanted to let you all know some news I got yesterday from the executive resolution specialist at Synchrony Bank. We spoke first about 4 weeks ago because I had reached out to the President of Synchrony's office to complain about my new Amazon Secured Card reporting balances to the credit bureaus after every purchase. It was bringing my credit score down and ruining my utilization and I was annoyed.

Anyways, she credited me $25 for what happened, apologized and told me she would reach out to the IT team to see why it was happening.

So about 2 weeks ago I made a few purchases on the card and it once again reported my balance to the bureaus. I spoke with her again and she told me she should get back to me this week.

Well, yesterday she called me and told me that someone high up in IT thinks they have discovered the problem as to why my card and so many others get random balances reported by Synchrony all the time. She told me it had something to do with an extra "byte" and to make a long story short, she thinks that IT fixed the problem for good!! Not just for me and my situation but she told me that there should be no more random balances reported for everyone with Synchrony Cards!!

We're gonna see what happens when I make my next purchase or 2 and see if it reports to the bureaus but she is hopeful it won't anymore. She told me from now on it will only report after the statement closes.

And she told me if this is indeed FIXED it is because of me and my persistance of calling her as well as leaving a message on the President's voicemail. She told me he was upset this was happening to me on a Secured Card as well as lots of other card holders she pointed out to him reading forums.

So i am crossing my fingers this random reporting by Synchrony Bank will finally come to an end and I'm happy I got this to happen.

Just wanted you all to know, Happy Thanksgiving!!

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Good work on your persistence. It will be interesting to see if they've really fixed it.

[MikeyMagic]

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@BuckyB wrote:

Well that's pretty **bleep** remarkable if true.  Though I wouldn't hold my breath that they figured it out completely.

Also, if true, it's pretty disturbing that their multi-million-dollar IT department couldn't figure out something was wrong with their multi-billion-dollar payment network without some random customer (no offense) calling them repeatedly and demanding that they look into it.

Then again it is Synchrony...😬

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Yeah agree with you. I mean this executive team member seemed to be hopeful it's fixed for everyone. I even asked her if it was fixed for me or other card holders of Synchrony cards as well as she told me for everyone.

I'm hopeful and I'll definitely let you guys know if my next purchase or 2 are reported. I wasn't gonna use this card anymore because of the random reporting except to pay for my Amazon Prime subscription once a month but now I have to test it out lol.

[CreditCuriosity]

Be suprised if true as thought they did that on purpose to make other creditors aware of possible risks if someone says charges 5k.  I never thought of it as a mistake and would be suprised if it was as I work in IT and have worked for many CC companies as well in the past.   Mistakes do happen, but this one has been around for awhile and if a mistake likely would of been caught along time ago by other people complaining as you certainly aren't the first by any means.  Good luck and hope they do change their ways on how they report.

[youngandcreditwrthy]

the random reporting balance is supposed to kinda be a check on credit usage.. many banks do this... some will take 3 months to report, some will report the day the account opens.. some report if you do a balance transfer, or make any other change to the account..

while it may be reason to not use the card (and if true then that's why the president was likely upset), it is legal for them to report balances at any time. 

what they should really do is be more generous with credit lines as well as expand unsecured credit offerings as opposed to having folks scared to spend 200 on a 500 secured card.

[MikeyMagic]

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@youngandcreditwrthy wrote:

the random reporting balance is supposed to kinda be a check on credit usage.. many banks do this... some will take 3 months to report, some will report the day the account opens.. some report if you do a balance transfer, or make any other change to the account..

while it may be reason to not use the card (and if true then that's why the president was likely upset), it is legal for them to report balances at any time. 

what they should really do is be more generous with credit lines as well as expand unsecured credit offerings as opposed to having folks scared to spend 200 on a 500 secured card.

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Well again, according to this executive team resolution person, she told me both her AND the President were surprised to read so many comments about their cards randomly reporting balances all the time. And according to her he "was not happy". And from the very beginning she thought the Synchrony Cards were only supposed to report a balance after the statememt closes.

So this may well be an example of the highest executives in the company not knowing what was going on by the IT dept. The whole thing though is weird isn't it?

[GZG]

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@youngandcreditwrthy wrote:

the random reporting balance is supposed to kinda be a check on credit usage.. many banks do this... some will take 3 months to report, some will report the day the account opens.. some report if you do a balance transfer, or make any other change to the account..

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agreed, synchorny did not set up a system to report balances in the specific way that they do only for it to be a mistake, why they won't just tell OP it's intentional is beyond me

[CreditCuriosity]

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@GZG wrote:

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@youngandcreditwrthy wrote:

the random reporting balance is supposed to kinda be a check on credit usage.. many banks do this... some will take 3 months to report, some will report the day the account opens.. some report if you do a balance transfer, or make any other change to the account..

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agreed, synchorny did not set up a system to report balances in the specific way that they do only for it to be a mistake, why they won't just tell OP it's intentional is beyond me

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Some things aren't shared.  proprietary information for reasons they choose not to explain and will not explain why they do things the way choose to.  Not sure why executive level is saying this as IT would of clearly relayed to executive team if even was asked.  Likely we will never know the outcome of this other than if as OP mentioned they changed the code (unlikely) esp since code freezes are in place right now at pretty much every big company through the holidays and this would have to be tested in great depth before released into production.  Don't buy it.

[Anonymous]

Presumably OP will be able to tell fairly quickly if the behavior has changed or not  (and if it has, the actual mechanism for the fix, whether bug or policy change, doesn't really matter).

If nothing has changed, that's going to hard for executive relations to explain.  I am also surprised that they are spending this much time on a secured card....