I bought my car in September - when registration came due in July State of Calif DMV wouldn't give me the tags for the vehicle due to some problem with the title. Seems they have still had not officially become the registered owner at that time - this was 10 months later. The lender was, at the time, Onyx Acceptance Corp. Onyx has always been a subsidiary of Capital One but now they call themselves Capital One Auto Finance.
I emailed, called, wrote and sent snail-mail to Onyx/Capital One and couldn't get one single response until August. I had one response that didn't even pertain to my issue.
When I called to follow up, I must have spoken to 4 or 5 people who each pulled up my record, reviewed it, then said things like "there is a problem with the paperwork but I'm trying to figure out what it is..." "I don't know", or "... Well I guess you need to do this...". They guess? They don't know? No one could tell me why the DMV wouldn't issue me the current tags on the vehicle.
And... All things led back to the customer service phone number where you have to start all over with people who don't know anything and can't figure out how to solve that should be routine to a company of this magnitude, I mean it's CAPITAL ONE for gosh sakes.
Finally, I got a guy who was relatively new, listened and offered to research and call me back. He actually did! He sent someone physically over to the DMV to find out what the problem was, solved it and called me the same day to let me know (thank you BLUE!). I got my tags within a week.
HOWEVER... Two days after that, I got a letter from Capital One stating that there was some problem with the dealership paperwork and that they would research it and get back to me. This was August 18. Today is January 4 and I hadn't heard a word from them until yesterday when someone left a message on my phone that the DMV was requiring a smog check before the title can be released to THEM (meaning Capital One).
I returned the call and must have forgot how awful the previous experience was and how inept their whole service setup is. I got the same people who reviewed the file and didn't see any note about anyone calling me the previous day, blah, blah, blah, round and round. Then they cut me off.
So I found the letter from August 18, called the main customer service number and asked for the person who signed it. I was put on hold. Someone finally came back and gave me a direct phone number. I called - got a fax tone. So I faxed... And on and on it goes...
So let's recap... I buy a car, I can't register it 10 months later when it becomes due because the lender isn't really the registered owner of the car because they haven't bothered to keep track of anything for about a year and 4 months and there are DMV requirements that need to be met by them but they can't seem to figure out what those are. Gee. Capital One. Who would have thought a company so huge could be overwhelmingly inept at business and downright stupid when it comes to customer service.
0 comments