I uncovered a despicable practice by Drive Financial and I implore any customer of theirs to check the calculation of their monthly payment.
After going over my loan amount, interest rate and term of the loan I realized that my monthly payment is $3.30 more than it should be. I plugged these figures into several loan calculators online and always came up with the same result.
I tried calling Drive/Santander to let them know of their error thinking they will simply recognize the mistake and make the correction. The first time I called the rep plugged the figures into a calculator and recognized there was an error. He told me that he had to escalate this and someone will get back to me. It slipped my mind and after 4 months I decided to call them back today.
After getting the run around and being disconnected a few times, some reps even had the nerve to say they didn't have access to a loan calculator. I wound up talking with a supervisor. She too recognized that the calculation was off by $3.30. After putting me on hold for a while she comes back and says that the additional $3.30 is for my warranty. We all know that made absolutely no sense. The warranty I purchased was included in the loan amount that I was plugging in to figure out the payment amount. There is no way that $3.30 a month had anything to do with a $1969 warranty. I argued this point over and over and asked that I get some proof showing that this overage was in fact linked to the warranty. No proof could be supplied, but she stuck to that excuse. After being put on hold again for a long time I was told to get a copy of the contract. I was directed to a statement on the contract that I agreed to pay the loan amount on the contract. Basically she was telling me "too bad we are over charging you, but you can't do anything about it". She said I should have read the contract before I signed it. Of course I read the contract, but I didn't think to bring a calculator to make sure the payment was correct. But I definitely will be prepared in the future.
To make an long story short, I come to believe that this so called mistake is an intentional way to subtly bleed the consumers. I know in my gut that I am not the only who is being overcharged. I have no idea how many customers they have but if I conservatively say 10,000 and they are overcharging each customer $3 that's $30,000 a month they are embezzling from their customers. If you use an average term of 60 months that comes out to be a total of $1.8 million dollars Drive Financial is stealing from their customers. Most customers will not notice being overcharged $3.00 a month. Especially customers that are just happy to get approved. This company is preying on that.
Drive Financial/Santander needs to be exposed. Any customer of theirs that reads this post, please go back and look at your contract. Plug in the loan amount, interest rate and term into any online calculator and see if you are being overcharged. Reply to this post letting us know if you are being overcharged and by how much.
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