Complaint Review: Fifth Third Bank - Internet

   This is what happens at any financial institution when you let late fees and interest accumulate for years.   Your casual attitude towards payment has a cost.   You have found out what that cost is.

" The loan officer could not guarantee that the fees would be waived so we made a good faith payment that was less than the total amount of fees, but was something we could afford at the time.  "

   Lenders are more concerned with what you owe and not very concerned with what you can afford to pay.   You seem to think that everyone should just accept your terms and leave it at that.  In the real world, that rarely happens.  

" If Fifth Third had followed through with its promise to work with us  "

   I just love that phrase.    On this site, "work with us" translates to "overlook that we can't pay what we owe" .

"  We ended up making two seperate payments to cover the cost of the late fees much to the emotional stress caused by the bank's reresentative.  "

  Some people pay as they agreed to.   Others need to be threatened with repossesion to pay.   There is nothing illegal about that, or even anything that could be remotely considered a ripoff.  It happens every day in the car loan business.

The "I don't like what you have to say so I am going to say that you work for the bank".  Well if you actually read posts around this site you would realize that I not only do not work for this or any bank, but I post on many different companies.  I think I am up to being accused of working for a couple dozen companies by now.

But I do want to thank you for shedding a bit more light on your report.  In your Original Post you inferred that you were paying quite a bit extra every month.   No you did not come right out and say how much, but when most people hear extra they really are not thinking a few quarters on a car payment.  So while I guess you are technically correct it can easily be seen that the "extra" statement was meant to be misleading.  So if that was misleading, one does have to wonder what else in your report is misleading.

As for them not calling you.  Yes they SHOULD have called you back when they said they would.  They didn't, but that is not enough to say "Well I am just going to ignore it until they do".

Robert from Irvine; what's your beef? You obviously work for a bank or other financial institution; or perhaps you are a lawyer? We merely rounded up the monthly payment to the nearest dollar amount every month which amounted to about three dollars extra per month. My other point is that communication involves two parties, a sender and receiver, message and reply. Obviously Fifth Third had no intention of working with us to resolve the issue. Have financial institutions in this country gotten so greedy that they are too cowardly to respond to a reasonable request? Have they forgotten what customer service means?  They made their money on the loan in spades so why not act like an ogre and squeeze a little more out of the customer, right? Everyone is entitled to their opinion and you Robert are no exception. You have a certain part of the human anatomy just like everyone else and it smells just as sweet like the proverbial "honey pot" suggests. In the Army we used to pour a little diesel in it and light a match. Here's to you Robert!

but because of the timing of our monthly payment and due to being unemployed for two years during this period, we were sometimes late making our payment.
- So you were late but ALWAYS paid extra?  Generally people on unemployment are having to "make every penny count".  So one would expect that you were paying only what you were required.  Or are you really saying that during this period you still paid more than you needed to?

We were assured by the loan officer that he would contact us by the end of the week regarding our situation. Noone from Fifth Third contacted us until we received a call from Fifth Third saying our late fees were in collection and that if we did not pay the total amount immediately,
- So I am figuring that this call from collections was after the end of the week.  If so why didn't YOU follow up with them to find out what is going on?  Or did you hope it would just go away?

After five years of loyalty to making payments and not missing a single month, this is the way Fifth third treated us; with threats and intimidation
- Do you want a "gold star" for doing EXACTLY what you made a legal agreement to do.  Well perhaps it should be a "silver star" because the agreement you made said you would make every payment ON-TIME..which you didn't do by your own admission.

By the way the "threats" were valid.  Until you pay off the loan you do NOT own the car.  Meaning that even if you owed $1 they can repossess it.