PayPal Credit Promotional Payment Allocation

[MrsDixon18]

PayPal Credit is using fraudulent deceptive practices when allocating payments towards promotional purchases. In 2015 CFPB ordered them to pay 25 million to its consumers for their shady practices. It’s 2018 and not much has changed. I have 24 month promotions and I have 6 month promotions. I make my minimum payment towards my 24 month promotions. And I payoff my 6 month promotions way before the end date. Most within a month of the purchase date. BUT PayPal Credit has this deceptive payment hierarchy where they allocate your payments so they benefit from accrued interest. So even when you make the minimum monthly payment and make extra payments to pay off your 6 month promotions, PayPal is not applying your extra payments towards the 6 month promotions. You have to call and ask to have your payments allocated towards the promotions or you’ll get stuck paying what I call the “stupid tax” 19.99% interest from the date of purchase. They bank on consumers lack of knowledge. They never communicate this in writing. They only tell you this when you call and complain. Extremely fraudulent deceptive practices. Shame on PayPal.

[jgatl]

I no longer recommend paying anything online but the minimum. If you want to specifically allocate (or override) your payment to go to a deferred interest (6 months same as cash), you should call in to <removed>. I spoke to a CSR today (7/13) and she told me that they can apply any payment, if made over the phone (using your existing PayPal Credit payment source), to any balance. I would not pay any excess payments online, since Synchrony is now quoting 1-2 billing cycles for reallocations. Be sure you are clear about the specific balance where your payment should be applied, providing the merchant name, original purchase date and original purchase amount and current balance amount. If you have an existing reallocation in place, be sure to treat it as "applied" until it's complete, while you are calling in to make additional payments. I'd also recommend making a specific payment for each balance on different days, rather than grouping them together. This way you can refer to the payment amount and date if there's a problem.

[Rob1040]

Thanks for the advice. Talking to Paypal Credit is like talking to a brick wall. I get a different answer every time as to how my payments are to be allocated. The best was this....."Every time you make a payment part of it will be allocated to the minimum." So lets say I owe $650 on a 6 month balance and $500 on a 24 month promo. My minimum payment on the 24 month is $50. If I pay $100 on July 10, fifty goes to the 6 month and $50 to the 24 month; if I pay an additional $100 this CS rep said it would also be allocated 50/50. In essence I could make several minimum payments in a given month.

My last payment of $300 was allocated $205 to my 24 month balance of $499(due to expire Nov 2020) and $95 to my 6 month balance expiring Nov 2019. That balance was $900. I called them and I got the 1-2 billing reallocation line and they said they would reallocate $245 to the 6 month number. Lets see! 

[jgatl]

I forgot to mention a critical step. You have to make your minimum payment in full before you can call in to have the CSR create a payment that will be applied to a specific balance. I am not using PP Credit’s autopay, because you can’t set a payment date. I always pay in advance of the due date, so I can verify how the minimum payment was applied before calling in to have the CSR apply a new payment on a specific balance. I agree Synchrony’s CSRs are not as good as Comeity Bank’s CSRs.

[teknickal12]

What a shame that we have to resort to this level to ensure that payments get allocated properly and on time with no issues. I fight this battle every month and just got hit with the 1-2 billing cycle timeframe this evening, which makes it even more confusing as now your statements and actual balances will never match.

[jgatl]

I successfully called in last week and applied a payment to a specific balance. The payment didnt show up in the portal for 2 days and then took another day or two for the balance to reflect the payment.  With respect to balance allocations, my reallocation happened in 14 calendar days (and the CSR confirmed this was the timeframe). They quote 2 billing cycles because dependent upon when you call into Paypal, the reallocation may fall into the 2nd billing cycle. Another important note, you can only make one balance payment per call into PP Credit. In this case, I had 2 balances I wanted to pay off and had to wait to the following day to make the 2nd payment. I believe you can make a payment and split it across two balances, but I wanted to keep it simple and have the payment amount match the balance I was paying off. 

[jgatl]

An update to my last post. My experience over the past 90 days has been horrible. I have been calling into PP Credit every 2 weeks to either allocate a new payment or fix an incorrectly applied payment. Calling in to get the representative to allocate the payment does not work and will just have you calling back in to get it fixed. I get an email in my inbox stating an allocation has been performed but it's never applied correctly. I now have 3 open cases for allocations (2 to be fixed and one that is to be applied). My first real problem will come on my November bill, where I have an expiring 6 month same as cash balance. I'd recommend to each of you to record your calls, take copious notes, and set a calendar invite to follow-up every 2 weeks.  At this point, I'm going to send a certified letter stating what's occurred, how I am disputing the 3 allocation letters that say the work has been completed, and what needs to happen to resolve these issues. 

[Rob1040]

I understand your frustration. I was calling daily and getting nowhere. They posted my payments to whatever balance they wanted, not to the earlier expiring 6 month balances as I wanted. Finally, much to my surprise they allocated all my past payments exactly as I wanted! I was shocked. Don’t despair you just have to get the right person. It can be done.

[Temp20230526DP]

Wait, so, are you guys saying that, even if I was to pay at least the "Amount to avoid Standard and Deferred Interest on your next statement", listed on the statement for the prior billing cycle, by the payment due date listed on the statement, my payment could still be allocated such that I'll have deferred interest charged at the end of the current billing cycle? Because if that's the case, I'm pretty sure that's a clear violation of the Fair Credit Billing Act and could warrant a lawsuit.

[fearlessrick]

ccook, In my case, the "Amount to avoid Standard and Deferred Interest on your next statement" is the full amount of my outstanding balance and the promotional amount, so I would have to pay everything in full. Sadly, I'm carrying a balance on PayPal Credit, but that's my number. ALL OF IT... I guess they left out the part "or we shoot the dog." ;-). I've made contact with Synchrony's media rep and she has responded. I'll be putting up another post soon and will post the link here. This isn't over, not by a long shot. I'm beginning to think this is just another one of those sad cases where an institution has control and won't budge on "policy" even though the policy is irrational and tends to aggravate people and cause more ill than good. It's pretty obvious to me that the bank is trying to maximize profits by ensnaring the unsuspecting (us) into an offer they never want to complete. The bank makes nothing on Zero interest, so there must be an angle, and it's not allocating payments to the zero interest portion of the debt until there are less than 60 days remaining. That way, the poor suckers (us, again) won't be able to come up with all the cash - because we're human and have budgets, maybe? - and Synchrony can stick us with all the "deferred interest." It's a scam from the word go.

Imagine if I told you, here, here's $500. You have to pay me back in six months, at no interest. But, you can't start paying me back until there are only 60 days left to pay. That just seems a little odd, doesn't it? What if I had the money in a couple of weeks? No, sorry, hold onto it for another four months. It's just not right.

[jgatl]

No @Temp20230526DP , if the minimum amount says $250, it will add up to the total of all easy pay (24 month) plans plus whatever balances are expiring this month. For both October and November, I submitted an online payment for this amount shown on the statement (also shown in the PP Credit portal), and the payment is allocated correctly. I have not found the 60 day rule to work in terms of applying the payment. Example, if your minimum to avoid interest is $200.00 on your November statement. You have $50 due each month in easy pay, a $150 balance expiring in December,  a $100 balance expiring in January for $100 and a balance expiring in February for $50. If you pay $350, $200 will go to paying off those balances expiring in December, but the $150 will go to your easy pay balance. In this case, you would use the portal to pay the $200 to avoid interest, but call in (and ask for a supervisor) to make a $150 payment, allocated as $100 to payoff the balance in January and $50 to payoff the balance in February. As of this posting, all of my allocations have finally been applied correctly. But I've had to call in 4x to get one of the allocations applied correctly. Turnaround time is about 2 weeks, so make sure you call in at least 2 weeks prior to your statement due date for payment allocations. My understanding from speaking to a supervisor is that Synchrony cannot handle these overpayments when one (or more) easy pay balances exist on the account. I have setup another PP Credit account under my spouse where I will only make 6 month no-interest purchases, and reserve my account for 24 month easy pay purchases. I believe doing this will allow any overpayments to be correctly applied to the next expiring balance.