Over the past eighteen months, I had a washing machine that decided that draining after the cycle was done was a step too far and a refrigerator that figured that my life would be incredibly enhanced by not actually keeping the contents properly cooled and/or frozen.
Given how modern appliances are built with many electronic points of failure and no sense of durability we remember from when Kenmore appliances didn’t suck and lasted forever, I’d gotten a decent life out of both of them.
As you can imagine, I wasn’t all that thrilled to be putting out the money that was in short supply on these items but sometimes you’ve got no choice but to roll the hard six.
Avoiding The Deferred Interest Trap!
That’s where the Lowe’s credit card I’d had for several years came in handy with their deferred interest programme which will not charge any interest provided you pay the purchase off completely before the promotional period ends.
Used correctly, this can make unexpected purchases a lot less painful to pay off.
The downside and the thing that usually traps the unsuspecting and/or unlucky consumer is that these deferred interest schemes will drop the interest bomb on you should you not finish paying off the promotional balance in time. The truly evil part that should come as no surprise in a deferred interest scheme is that the interest bomb is based on the original charge, not what you actually owe at the time the promotional period ends so you get no relief for whatever payments you’d been making to that point.
In my case, the refrigerator’s interest bomb was due to drop on Katie’s birthday and at 31.99% interest on an approximately $1,800 charge, I was looking at darned near $600 being dumped on me if I didn’t finish paying off the balance!
Now, that eye-popping interest rate might bring to mind the term usury or it’s more common appellation of loan sharking and you’re not far from the truth for thinking that.
Mind you, that 31.99% rate was a 5% jump from the only slightly less appalling amount of 26.99% APY that card imposed less than two years ago and was raised mainly because the bank could totally get away with doing so unilaterally.
But according to the NC Regulation of Financial Services Act, they were just under the maximum interest rate that could be imposed for a balance less than $4,000…
§ 53-176. Rates, maturities, and amounts.
(a) A licensee may make installment loans with loan amounts not exceeding twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000), that are not repayable in fewer than 12 months or more than 96 months, that are not secured by deeds of trust or mortgages on real estate, and that are repayable in substantially equal consecutive monthly payments. A licensee may charge and collect interest on these loans, not to exceed the following rates:
(1) With respect to a loan with a loan amount at origination not exceeding twelve thousand dollars ($12,000), thirty-three percent (33%) per annum on that part of the unpaid principal balance not exceeding four thousand dollars ($4,000), twenty-four percent (24%) per annum on that part of the unpaid principal balance exceeding four thousand dollars ($4,000) but not exceeding eight thousand dollars ($8,000), and eighteen percent (18%) per annum on that part of the remainder of the unpaid principal balance.
(2) With respect to a loan with a loan amount at origination exceeding twelve thousand dollars ($12,000), eighteen percent (18%) per annum on the outstanding principal balance.
Ouch!
In Defeat, Malice…In Victory, Revenge!
Fortunately, I was able to pay off the refrigerator with about a week to spare to avoid having the interest bomb dropped on my account!
Yay!
So imagine my surprise when less than a week later, I get an EMAIL saying there was a digital letter available for viewing online and that letter stated that they were unilaterally closing the credit card account.
My immediate thought upon reading that was that Synchrony Bank was pissed that I’d managed to avoid the deferred interest trap on both appliances so they ended up reaping zero interest from me and so they’d dumped a deuce on my credit score in retaliation.
It’s not illegal for them to do so but it’s still a scumbag move nonetheless.
However, I truly wasn’t prepared for how correct that initial guess would end up being!
Of the four reasons stated in the letter for their decision based on data that came from TransUnion (often the least accurate and/or useful of the Big Three credit bureaus who for decades thought I was a senior citizen because they’d fat-fingered my birthday), three of them are laughably easy to disprove as the massive pile of bovine faeces they were.
The one reason they did give that was reasonable was rather ironic considering that it was my having to move heaven and earth to pay off Synchrony Bank before they bloated my balance that is the reason that item is hurting my credit score right now which would be patently obvious to a chimpanzee and two trainees!
What is really infuriating is that the fact that I had never been late with a payment to them *EVER* seemed to have no impact upon their decision.
Sadly, I think they’d be better off hiring the chimpanzee because this clearly smells of an “AI” just doing what it was programmed to do by people who are very familiar with evil and predatory banking practices.
Their Reputation Is Devastatingly Accurate!
Cha Cha: They call me Cha Cha because I’m the best dancer at St. Bernadette’s.
“Grease” (1978)
Frenchy: With the worst reputation.
Lowe’s credit card operations weren’t always evil but that all seemed to change when they rebranded their credit cards and quietly sold the whole of the credit operation to Synchrony Bank in August, 2025.
Synchrony specialises in store-brand credit operations often considered to be a sub-prime market from which they can extort massive interest and fees from those consumers who aren’t lucky enough to dodge all of the bank’s machinations to liberate their money from their pockets.
To say they have an awful reputation is a grand understatement of epic proportions!
Right now, I’ve got an active dispute open with Green Dot Bank which is often reviled as an evil bank but a bit of research has shown that Synchrony is even more evil by orders of magnitude.
There’s two main ways that you can tell when they’re pissed at you:
- As your balance declines, they will randomly drop your credit limit to just above your balance ensuring you can’t make any further purchases and they’ll chase your balance all the way down to zero when they will unilaterally close your account.
- They’ll just summarily close your account without reason or recourse even if you’ve never been late paying them.
Both of these actions are meant to damage if not destroy the consumer’s credit rating for an added flavouring of spite on top of their behaviour which manages to stay just this side of the law.
You don’t even have to offend their AI to have this happen to you.
People who have had their cards for years and pay off their balances on-time (in the industry, these consumers are known as “deadbeats”) and only use them when they’re needed will be culled from the herd and have their accounts closed en-masse to make their quarterly financials look better (how, I have no idea).
The irony is that it would not shock me to see mailers in the post box flogging a Lowe’s credit card account at me in a month or so and they’d more than likely approve it on the nod.
I doubt I’ll take them up on the offer given how lousy Lowe’s installation and follow-up customer service has gotten of late and I’ll be sure to avoid any entanglement with Synchrony Bank in the future because dealing with them and their evil games is just not worth the time, effort, or money.
I never imagined that I’d be thankful for a bank engaging in a real scumbag move but in this case, I’m thankful that I’m done with them before they could do anything truly nasty to me! 🙂