When I lived in Connecticut I purchased a car through Berkshire Bank out of Mass. I was with this bank for maybe 6 - 9 months. During this time period I never had any issues with the loan. I received a letter stating that my account was to be purchased by Crescent Bank and that paperwork was to follow soon. Prior to receiving the paperwork I got hurt at work and was out of work for a long period of time, I had purchased a disability rider on my loan just in case. It took weeks to finally get this process started with Crescent and the Insurance Company. Every now and then the Insurance Company would be late with their payment and they would usually pay 3 months at a time. If I came across some extra monies I would put that towards my car note. What ended up happening was that my car note was on the average of three months paid in advance. During that time period some how there was a late fee attached to my payments from the Disability Insurance.
I called the bank and spoke with many people to include Carol Dugass. She tried to explain to me how a late charge can applied to a account that was current and also was paid in advance.
I did not agree with her explanation so I contacted the President of the Bank via US Postage and while I never received a reply back the "Late Fee" was taken care of. That was my extent of problems until Hurricane Katrina, I live in Biloxi and it was South Mississippi that took a direct hit from Katrina; not New Orleans as the media wishes you to believe. I had no phone service, no mail, no electricity for almost 3 months due to the extent of damage we received.
Since the storm my account was seriously in trouble and I did what I could to stay above the waterline. Where my problems really got out of control is that Crescent Bank rotates their Loan Officers on what appears to be a weekly basis. I would set up a agreement with one person and another would call me a few days later and not know what was going on.
This finally went past critical stages when I had a agreement to send in a payment through a Cindy Milligan to a PO Box, which I did. A few weeks later the check still had not cleared but I sent most of my payments as a signature required letter. The check was signed for by Crescent maybe 3 days after it was sent and I received a phone call from another loan officer about not receiving the payment. Crescent is real quick to blame the Post Office and they threatened to take my car if I did not send another payment that day. They wanted this payment via some payment service which I refused because I was already out money with the first check sent as a proof of delivery through the US Mail. I asked them to verify they did not have the check because if they cashed both my checking would have gone into negatives. I was reassured the check was not found, approx two days later my checking account was in the red because not one but two checks were cashed by Crescent Bank.
I called the Bank and spoke with Ms Dugas who explained to me it was not their fault that they cashed both checks and that it was my responsibility to have enough monies in my account to cover checks that I wrote. I asked to speak with a supervisor about this huge error on their behalf and I was not able to speak with any person. I wrote another letter to the President of Crescent Bank and my loan was credited not only the monies from those checks but also all fees charged to me by my Bank in Biloxi were credited by Crescent bank against my car loan.
From that day forward I refused to speak with any of their Loan Officers on the phone due to my not being able to document the conversation properly. Any time a person would call I would refer them to write me a letter and I refused to speak with them. My car loan was getting down to the last 3 payments when Crescent finally pulled the rug out from under me. I had asked many times for updated information about my loan but they never complied. I did get a statement and on that statement it showed that I was a total of $16.00 owed from the previous month. I was not concerned about this dollar amount and some loan Officer would call me on a daily basis, as if it was clock work. I did advise her many times that my approved form of communication from Crescent Bank was only US Postage. I sent out what was to be my second to last payment to Crescent and while it was in transit the bank decided that they were going to repo my car over the owed amount. When I finally calmed down and called the Bank the following day I spoke with a Mike in Virginia who calmly told me had I paid my bills this would have never happened. I am unsure who the Loan Officer was at this time but I got the buy out information and sent it through Wal-mart. They received the payment and tacked on a additional $400 for the repo fee. So my total buy out with the repo fee was around $900.00 dollars. Once I got to the repo lot then the real fun started, the tow truck damaged my car by crushing the muffler and they refused to talk to me because they were working with Crescent. I finally lost it and blew up as the car no longer belonged to Crescent it was mine. After I pissed off the local rednecks who did the repo (OMG it was like Huck Fin with kids running around in dirty diapers, back in the woods) I was allowed to speak with a person with some actual understanding as how the world works with communications. I took photographs of the damage then the repo lot tried to charge me their fees. That's when I really got mad and the lady who was helping me really got concerned about my attitude. She called her manager back and after a 20 minute phone conversation we came to a workable deal, they waived the fee, and offered to pay to have the damaged repaired and finally they apologized for my problems.
In closing while part of this was my fault I believe that Crescent is its own worst customer. Many different times I would talk with a same rep for a few weeks and then a new one was assigned to my case and then another and then another, etc. I just honestly believe that quite a few of the Loan Officers are very new and do not totally understand what their jobs are about and once they finally understand they either rotate out, get fired or quit. If you complain enough and to the right people the system does work, but the first step is accepting blame if it is your fault. Part of this was due to my fault, part was due to Hurricane Katrina and finally Crescent did have a part in this story. I hope someone from the Bank does read these stories and hopefully it is acted upon and will result in less transfers of their Staff and maybe more Sensitivity Training for all that work there. I acted quickly with my situation and paid Crescent off within 6 hours of the repo. I have looked at other cars recently and really liked a car at a Used Car lot here in Biloxi but Crescent was their only lending Bank there; sorry Once Bitten; Twice Shy.
Jocko
Biloxi, Mississippi
U.S.A.
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