This company financed a stolen vehicle that was sold to my son. The dealer is now in jail for this and other offenses. The loan form was obsolete, they did not catch the bad VIN number, niether did PennDOT. My son's g/f bought their own insurance on the car, despite the fact that the dealer said he would buy a year's insurance, using the trade in money. The money for the insurance was also included in the loan, so in effect he got his money back for the trade in, because he never bought the insurance.
Westlake never sent a payment book, but my son's g/f called and got an address and name to send the payments to. They were never late, and in fact, made an extra payment in the 4th month after Westlake started calling. Westlake started calling in the 3rd month after the purchase, complaing about late payments. After many calls and faxes, they proved that they were actually ahead of schedule.
After a month of quiet, the calls started again. We went over the same ground without being able to figure out what the problem was, and there were increasing threats of repo, until a repo man finally came knocking on our door. My son was at work with the vehicle, so they weren't able to take it then. We showed the repo man what we had sent Westlake, and he showed us the repo papers. It showed we owed on the insurance policy the dealer had supposedly taken out for us.
We showed the repo driver we had our own insurance. He told us to tell Westlake, we did. They refused to accept the fact that we had our own insurance, full coverage, and continued to repo the vehicle. They somehow found the vehicle where my son works and grabbed it. When my son found it missing, he called the police. They ran the registration, found no repo report, and listed it as stolen. The next day we got a letter from Westlake saying they were repoing the vehicle, They said we had 30 days to straighten things out.
We contacted the insurance company to report the stolen vehicle. That's when the insurance company told us the vehicle had a VIN number that did not match the vehicle. They had written to Westlake about it, and got no reply, so had gone ahead and approved the insurance. You'll notice, not only Westlake, but the insurance co, and the state agency, PennDOT, dropped the ball on this.
The letter from Westlake told us where the vehicle was stored by the repo co. So we could go and get any personal effects from it. We called the number on the letter and they told us that we could come there anytime and pick up our things. 15 days from the day the vehicle came missing, my son was able to get a day off work, unpaid. We made an hour and a half trip to the vehicle storage.
At first, the gentlemen we encountered said they new nothing, then a young lady came out and said our personal effects were in another location. An hour fromn where we lived, but another hour and a half from the storage facility. The faciltiy had a fenced in area behind it, but the building itself blocked any view of it, so we could not see if the vehicle was there. We called their office to make sure there would be someone there, and that they did indeed have our personal effects, then went there.
They had our effects in a green garbage bag and charged us $25.00 for storage before they would give it to us. $5.00 a day before the vehicle was sent to auction, so it had bent sent 5 days after they had picked it up. I told them the letter from Westlake had said it would be held for 30 days, and they said PA state law gave them 15 days. I asked why they has sent it after only 5 days then, and they said they could that if they wanted to. I asked them if they new about the bad VIN nuumber, they said it was a clerical error. I asked if they had reported the repo, one lady said she had made the call herself. I double checked with the police when we got home, and they have no record of a repo report for that day.
My son'd g/f's family has an attorney, during the course of all this, we made him aware of what was going on. He is now handling everything, and has found out a lot about Westlake, it's many names, and illegal practices. He is now handling a suit on behalf of my son. One of the things he has done is to try and trace the vehicle, it has disappeared.
Personally, I hope that this suit does some damage to Westlake, but from what I've seen on the net about them, they probably look as any succesful suits as overhead, as are the many attorneys I'm sure they employ.
Unfortunatly, we have once again been entangled with Westlake. My son's g/f financed a vehicle through another dealer, through Ameriquest, as the loan agency. Soon after we got a letter from Westlake asking for payments on the vehicle. MY son and his g/f thought there was a mistake, but sent the letter to the attorney.
It seems he assumed it had something to do with the suit, and didn't really look at it. We just found out that Ameriquest had turned the loan over to Westlake, without notifying her. They claimed they could not do it because her credit was bad, althought the dealer ran a credit check and found absolutely nothing bad on it. I have since done research on the net, and found that Ameriquest is just as bad, if not worse, than Westlake. The attorney told us that this was not illegal. We have to try to hold on the the vehicle for 4 months until we can try to refinance.in the meantime, my son's g/f made 2 payments to Ameriquest, which they have kept.
It seems to me that a finance company would routinely run VIN numbers to avoid financing stolen vehilces, and why would you approve a loan on an obsolete from, when it would be a simple matter to redo the paperwork? And why would you approve a loan for a person you ahd just repoed a vehicle from? My son's g/f was the contact person thru the fiasco, she lives with us, they had to recognize the name and address. I'm afraid they are in cahoots with Ameriquest, and did this deliberately.
I saw a rebuttal on another report by a Westlake employee claiming that WFS Finacial was not Westlake. If she sees this, I would ask her, what does WFS stand for? She also listed 15 names for Westlake, why have they changed their name so many times, unless they are trying to run away from something? Probably more to come.
William r
Avalon, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.
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