My problems with Capital One Auto Finance border on the unbeliveable. My husband and I bought a used Nissan Altima in 2000. When the dealership registered our car I had noticed that they had misspelled my name and they said that it was easily correctible. What I didn't notice is that they had put a close, but incorrect driver's license number on it as well!
Shortly after purchasing the car, I discovered I was pregnant and when I started reducing my time at work in my last trimester, we were having trouble paying on time. Often we had to make a double payment one month to make up for the month before. Then Sept 11 happened. It was supposed to be my first day back from maternity and luckily my babysitter was unavailable and I wasn't able to go in that day. (I commute through the World Trade Center).
After 9/11, NYC was virtually closed for 2 weeks, so I didn't return to work until the beginning of October. Also no one wanted to come here, so my husband, who worked at a trendy restaurant in Times Square was reduced to 20 hours a week, which not only redcued our income, but caused us to lose our health coverage. This caused us considerable financial problems. We filed for bankruptcy in Dec mostly in order to prevent repossesion of the car, and cover outstanding medical bills.
I was pulled over in a routine stop in March. The cop told me both the licence and registration for my car had been suspended, but my license was clean. They impounded the car. I went to court and got the charges thrown out, but to get my car back I needed to re-register it with the correct DL number. DMV told me in order to prove that I was indeed authorized to register it in my name, they needed a letter from this company stating that I was.
I called the company, they asked me for proof, which I faxed them and they said they would get back to me. After numerous follow-up calls and refaxing of the information, I was basically told "don't call us - we'll call you".in May I received notice from the police department that they had sold my car.
Because we no longer had the car, we decided not to go through with the bankruptcy. I never heard another word about it, never received a bill until a year later in when they started calling me looking for payment or they were going to repossess the car. I laughed and recounted the story. I refaxed my proof and the customer service rep apologized and said they would charge it off.
Do you know that my credit is now ruined because of this? It is showing that I have an outstanding loan in the amount of around ~$10,000 and I can't even get a store account in my name, much less a car or house.
I didn't mind making payments through the bankruptcy court to save my car, but I certainly wasn't going to continue paying for a car I no longer had—especially when it was their fault I lost the car, due to their inept and lousy service. A simple one page letter would have made all the difference but that was too much trouble for them.
Whether this problem was due to company policy or to one employee dropping the ball, I don't know—all I know is, that I am still paying today for their mistake.
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