The action alleges that the two stores, in association with Monogram Credit, make a particular “promotional” offer to customers whereby they may purchase goods with no payments and no interest for periods of up to 12 months. The offer is only good for purchases of $299 or more, and may only be taken advantage of by customers to open a credit card account for Home Depot or Lowe's credit card provided by Monogram. Once customers make the promotional purchase, there allegedly encouraged to use the card to make other regular purchases. The action alleges that customers actually only received the benefit of the interest-free promotional purchase if they never used their credit card for any other purchases during interest free period.

Monogram allegedly operates the credit cards so that payments for customers’ regular non-promotional purchases are only paid after the promotional balance is paid off. Take, for example, the following: a customer buys a washing machine for $1000 on a promotional purchase for six months interest-free using a Monogram credit card, and then the next month buys a $200 chainsaw using the same card. The action alleges that any payment to customer makes on the credit card channel it first go to pay off the $1000 promotional purchase, and that the $200 purchase would not be cleared, but instead would be left to gather interest. Allegedly, Monogram’s response to complaints is that it maintains the right to allocate payments to accounts in its “sole discretion.”

The action alleges that, by concealing its manner of applying payments to purchases, Monogram and the conspirator stores engage in a deceptive scheme that violates Washington law.