Ok, this is going to be a long one... Here goes: My wife & I purchased a '99 Grand Prix in June of '01 from a local dealership and made the mistake of financing it through UAC. As with some of the other reports on this site, we recieved a payment coupon book from UAC. A few months later we recieved a statement that told us to toss the payment book because they were going to start sending out "easy to read monthly statements". That's when we started noticing weird things start happening.
I'll be honest, we've made a couple late payments and expected to have to pay late fees but I expected the late fees to be the same every time... They weren't. Sometimes the fees were $10, some times they were $12, once it was $25!
Also, on the statements it breaks the payment info down to how much went to principal and how much was interest but again, the amounts vary month to month. Our monthly payment is $291.06, one month $173.30 went to principal, $121.70 went to interest, the next month $280 went to interest and only $10 went to principal. I don't know what they're doing and I can't get a straight answer from their cust. Service department (boy is that an oxymoron!).
The latest problem with them is that we started noticing that our checking account was sometimes coming up $299 short and we couldn't figure out why until we looked more closely at our bank statements and saw a debit that was labeled "IC payment (followed by a 20-digit number)" in the amount of $299. I called their 800 number and after waiting on hold for over an hour I was told that according to their computers I had signed and returned the form authorizing them to Auto Debit my account and that auto debit was started on our account in Aug. Of '01.
Since then, there have been 4 auto debit withdrawals from our account, so I asked them why there's only been the 4 withdrawals if it's been set up since Aug.'01 and they blew me off, said, "well, our computer must be wrong because your account is current and paid up, obviously the auto debits have been going through". Yeah, right, they only reason the account is current (it's actually a couple payments ahead) is because we've been sending in checks for our regular payments.
I have been told a different story every time I call the cust. Serv. Line and none of them explain what's going on. Two weeks ago I asked them to mail me a detailed account statement and was very specific that I wanted it to show payment dates, amounts, and what type of payment it was ie. Auto debit, check by mail, check by phone etc. And I also requested a copy of the form I supposedly had to sign for the auto debit. After a week I recieved nothing so I called them back and was told they had no record of me calling the week before, go figure. I again requested it and told them if it wasn't in my mailbox in one week I was calling the Atty. Gen. Both here in Oklahoma and there in Indiana.
Today was their deadline and guess what? I still haven't recieved the copy of the form and the statement I recieved today didn't show what type of payment each payment was. I called again today after getting the mail and asked what was going on and was told that the statement I recieved was as detailed a statement as they were going to provide me and that they were still working on finding the form. Tomarrow morning I'm making 2 phone calls to the Atty. Gens. I'm sick and tired of getting the runaround and running into brick walls with these people.
I know that they have to maintain a copy of the form (if indeed we did sign it) in their files and if they can't produce a copy of if I'm filing a lawsuit because that constitutes fraud and theft, they're illegally taking money out of my checking account without proper written, signed authorization. If by some miracle they can produce an actual copy of the form with my sig. On it, I'm still going to take action against them because if we had signed up for the auto debit payment and they only took 4 payments over the course of a year and 8 months, we wouldn't have our car anymore 'cause they'd have repossessed it for nonpayment a long time ago!
At first all they offered to send me as proof of the authorization for auto debit was a printout from their computer showing when it was supposedly set up and I was told "that's all we can give you, that'll have to be good enough". Well, I'm sorry to say that's NOT good enough. After I explained to them that I have a fairly decent knowledge of the laws pertaining to this sort of thing (and the fact that I currently have a lawyer on retainer) they did a complete 180 and said, "oh, I'm sorry, you meant you wanted a copy of the actual form, I misunderstood you, we'll find it and send it out right away".
Anyways, I'll try to post updates when I can, assuming anything happens worthy of an update. Thanks to all the others who've posted here, it's nice to know we're not the only one's trying to fight these pricks!
Lucas
Midwest City, Oklahoma
U.S.A.
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