Americredit No prior notice that your final payment is doubled on car loan Ripoff Phoneix Arizona
This loaner claims that 1 month's notice is plenty time to remind me that my car loan is now due and has doubled for the last payment.
In the real world, people live on budgets, and that they have sent me a postcard/or letter on/or about Jan.23rd, 2006 letting me know. My mail goes to a PO Box. Due to a medical condition, I can not drive, and must depend on the kindness of others to run errands for me and to pick up my mail.
As of Jan.31st, 2006 I still have not gotten the written notice.
During the duration of the loan, I was late a couple of times, and with no problem, they were able to call me. Also because at times I would make car payments on their website to get the payment to them quickly, or if the payment was crossing in the system, Americredit had no problem, sending me a email reminder that the payment was due.
When you sign a loan agreement, the loan officer makes you inital here, there and everywhere on the paperwork. How can you rememeber during this time of high exicement of buying a new car that your last payment will be doubled?
I have financed several cars over the last 20 to 25 years and never recall having this situation.
To better serve the customers, and be sure that the company is paid, I suggest that they start sending reminder notices of the doubled payment at least 6 months prior. Adding in a email, or a phone call or two wouldn't hurt their business either.
Nancy
Bryantville, Massachusetts
U.S.A.
3 Updates & Rebuttals
Richard
Richmond,Virginia,
U.S.A.
Reply to the 3rd Post (from Walkerton, NC)
#4Consumer Comment
Thu, February 23, 2006
In case you are calling me scum for defending Americredit, you had best think again. I am not an Americrdeit employee and in fact dislike the company very much. I used to be in the business with a competitor and left that company under less than favorable conditions and now am employed in a totally diffreent field so I really do not seek to justify the industry's actions.
Notice that the original complaint had nothing to do with Americredit's being nasty to her or not working with her. I just explained the math to her. If a customer is late with a paymnet a couple of weeks a few times, the unpaid interest is easily going to equal a payment by the end of the loan.
About the secondary finance business- IT IS A NASTY BUSINESS. Americredit is not much worse than any of the many other lenders that service that market. All collectors are under a tremendous amount of pressure and must meet quotas on a daily or weekly basis. Normally agreements to pay that go past a few dat=ys or are not scheduled for the customers next pay day are considred unsatisfactory. You as the customer may have legitimate problems and sincerely will pay per your arrangement but experience has taught the collectors that a loan that is past due must be adjusted quickly. A loan in default (2 Payments past due-one day late is past due so 31 days late is 2 pymnts past due) must be resolved immediately.
For those who have had credit problems the options are not pretty. One can go down to the corner car lot and buy a piece of junk and pay weekly and also subject oneself to repossession if a day late or go to a new car dealer and buy a car that should be better than the clunker at your corner lot and deal with the secondary finance lender. Of course, the third option is to save up and buy a car through a private owner and have the vehicle checked out by your local reputable mechanic before you buy.
The car dealership that sends your business to Americredit or any other secondary lender does not care whether you are treated well by your note servicer or not. All that it cares about is that your deal gets funded. The finance manager will lie to you to get you to sign the papers. He will lie to the secondary finance lender in order to get them to finance the contract. If you are upside down in your current loan they will advise you not to trade but to just turn the car in and not tell you that you will have a large deficiency balance that is due immediately!
After 10 years of experience in the filed let me offer some suggestions to customers.
1) Read everything. Do not let the salesman tell you these are just boring papers and everone signs them.
2) Remember that you must make a payment every month. That includes layoff months, Christmas, etc. Just because a $500 payment sounds OK for 45 days from now, does not mean that you will be comfortable with that payment everymonth thereafter.
3) The salesman is going to tell you that you wilL be able to rfinance within the next 6 - 12 months. Unless your bank or credit union tells you that in writing , do not base your buying decision on this empty promise. The salesman is lying to you to make the sale!
4) If you go into the dealership hoping for a 3.99APR and a Camry, but you get offered 22.99APR step back and take a breath. Buy a Carolla or just walk out of the showroom. Don't let the salesman use your ego or sense of embarrassment to saddle you in something that you can not afford.
To the poster from Walkerton, NC: I know this is a long post and I know that 99% of it may not apply to you. You may well have been very cautious in the buying procedure and still things dd not work out. I have been meaning to post this for awhile and now was just the time for me to do so. Good luck in your future.
Jack
Walkertown,North Carolina,
U.S.A.
what happens Nancy is Americredit are crooks. payments are more than doubled by this company
#4Consumer Comment
Wed, February 22, 2006
When you send in Western Union payments, and money orders and checks, Americredit has a way of losing these payments. IT has happened to me on several occassions. Even after you provide them wiht proof that you made the payments, they have already added late charges and more interest and so on. Most of the time when you use Americredit you end up paying twice the amount you financed and sometimes more. They get very upset when they have to reduce an interest rate for military people. That is when the fun really begins. When the crooks have to give you a 6 percent interest rate , they will fight you tooth and nail and invent more charges and never, ever show you proof of what they have done. I have been in battle with them for over a year now and it is not over by a long shot. This is nothing but a bunch of crooks and they write their own rules as they go along. They have violated their own contract with me several times. The more people report them to the BBB, and Attorney General, the more chances of winning a class action law suit against these crooks. The CEO's are a joke. THey ignore emails, ignore certified letters and when you report them to these agencies, they give some minimum wage worker the complaint and make them answer it. Then they will come up with some off the wall amounts that you have never seen or heard of and tell the BBB and the Attorney General that this is what you owe and yet, you have never ever been told or sent anything even close to what they show these agencies.
Dealerships need to be informed of their practices too, if they dont already know. I have already informed several dealerships in my area and I am boycotting Americredit. I will not do business, or my family or friends will not do business with anyone that uses Americredit. These people are the scum of the earth and if someone will treat Soldiers and also handicapped people the way they have, hell is too good for this outfit.
They either harass their customers to death or ignore them. They dont operate as a reputable business, because they are loansharks. Once you have signed the contract with them, they own you until it is paid and you will pay dearly for it.
I wished I had been warned about these scumbags before I got involved with them, but i am getting the word out about them now and am hoping to shut them down in my state, so they cant keep ripping people off like they do.
Anybody who defends this company is either an employee or someone who has no idea how companies like these operate. There are too many stories and I mean horror stories about this company and they use the same tactics are all their customers.
It is called CROOKS..................
Richard
Richmond,Virginia,
U.S.A.
Your Last Payment is not doubled
#4Consumer Comment
Wed, February 22, 2006
You state in your comments that you have been late on the loan payments in the past, No doubt your loan was interest bearing thus accruing interest on a daily basis. The lender has no way to know your exact payoff on a certain date until all previous paymnets have been applied. Your loan was structureed so that if you made every payment exactly on the due date for the exact amount of the payment there would be no unusual last payment. Since that did not happen due to some of your misfortune, your last paymentm was a different amount. Usually one's final coupon advises the customer to call for a final payoff.
Previous loans you had may have been what is called a pre-compute loan in which each month's interest is pre-structured into the loan and as long as the loan is paid off by the final due date and all late charges have been paid, the final payment is no diffrent than the others.
Pre-compute loan are not good if you pay the loan off early as one pays more of the interest up front and there is usually a pre-payment penalty.