In late June our '04 Ford Taurus was a total loss when a wind storm broke a tree and caused it to fall on the car. Our insurance company, Progressive, was quick to respond assess the damage and, as mentioned earlier, declare the vehicle a total loss. Progressive, per our coverage at the time of the claim, paid out two payments to Santander. The first payment was for the value of the vehicle, $7,304.91 and the second was for load/lease payoff coverage, $1,951.23 for a total of $9,256.14. The first payment was sent on July 1 and the second on July 7. I received a phone call from Santander on or about July 19 stating that I was seven days past due paying my account and would I settle the payment over the phone. I answered that "No, I won't, you should have two payments from my insurance company to more than cover the balance of the loan." Santander stated that they had received no payments from Progressive.
I called the Progressive Claim's representative for my claim, David Moss, immediately and explained the situation. David immediately stopped payment on the initial checks that had been sent and contacted Santander to arrange new payments to be sent out. He overnighted the new payments to Santander via USPS. I again received a phone call from Santander stating that I was delinquent in my payment. I asked if they had received the overnighted payments from Progressive.
The customer service representative for Santander was less than helpful. She knew of no payments and asked me if knew where the payments had been sent and could I track them down. Again, I called my claims representative; and again David called Santander trying to figure out if, when or who received the payments that were sent via overnight mail. No one was able to locate the payments. So, once again David stopped payment on the checks and arranged to have the payments sent, again overnight, via Federal Express. David then gave me the FedEx tracking number so that I would know the status of the package and when it was received by Santander.
The payment was received in Santander's office on a Monday, July 25 and signed for by a D. Lee. On Wednesday July 27 Santander again called me stating I was delinquent. At this point I lost my temper. Once again I called my Progressive claims representative. Once again David called Santander to unravel the situation. Santander, after three failed attempts to pay them, said that they would open a case to investigate. After their investigation I received two letters on Monday August 8 stating that they had received my payments but the monies were not enough to pay off my principal. I knew this information to be false. I promptly called Santander's Insurance Department to discuss the matter. As it turns out, they did receive the payments, my account had a zero balance and was declared closed. Apparently Santander had a "glitch" in their system that mailed out letters on closed accounts attempting to collect a debt. I also learned that I would not receive my reimbursement of $1083 until sometime after September 8 because it takes 30 to 45 days to process a reimbursement. To which I replied, "You wasted 30 days already because you obviously don't know how to process a payment!" I explained that I was not upset with Jessica, the customer service representative for Santander but rather I was upset at her company for their incompetence. Jessica apologized as best she could and remained professional. However, there seems to be some rather dubious dealings or business practices going on at Santander Consumer USA Inc.
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