I am writing this to warn other people that may have Long Beach Acceptance as their loan company. We bought our van from Novato Ford and at first was happy to get financing because we had had some serious setbacks and our credit was not very good.
Through the last 5 years of buying out van, we have been late off and on with our payments. We have received calls even if it had been only 3 days since the payment was due. What we did not realize however, was that for every day you are late, they are adding on an additional $4-$10 until they receive your payment. These DO NOT appear on your monthly billing statement-they are HIDDEN fees. YES-a late fee will appear on your billing statement if you are 30 days past due, but that is an ADDITIONAL late fee. You will not find out about that hidden late fee until you get to your last payment.
Let me explain to you what I mean. We recently got approved for financing through Capital One so we decided since we only had 4 payments left, to trade our van in for another one with half the interest that Long Beach was charging. We told the dealer that we had 4 payments left of $358 which would equal $1432. We also had $600 (unbelievable!) in late fee charges which showed up on our monthly bill. When the dealer tried to call Long Beach to get the payoff amount, suddenly there was not just the $1432 and the $600, there was an additional amount of $588.00!!
The lame explanation was that we had a simple interest loan and that even if we were 1 day late, they could charge up to $10 a day. They claim that it is all in fine print in the contract we signed! But it is UNDISCLOSED to the consumer!
The most amazing thing is that they do not put the ADDITIONAL LATE FEE on your bill! So I said -What happens after you make your last payment and you are expecting your owners slip in the mail? Do you suddenly disclose the extra late payment that is HIDDEN and never is shown to the consumer anywhere and then they are expected to pay it? The response was a runaround vague one.
What amazes me most is that Long Beach would gladly tell me to post-date them a check even though they knew that it would still be considered late and I would be incurring massive late fees on top of other "Normal" late fees. Our current car dealer told us that they never do those kind of loans in Texas anymore (and haven't for years) and could not believe that a dealer was still doing them. I guess for all of us poor, unsuspecting buyers we are just suckers for Long Beach Acceptance to rip off.
The reason I'm writing this is to FOREWARN you that if you want to try and pay your car off early, you will not only NOT get a discount (most places will give you a discount on the interest) you will be in for the SHOCK of your lives when they tell you how much you REALLY owe. It does not show up on your statement.
I guess if you are a super human and always pay every single payment on the exact due date for your entire 5 year period-you would not have a problem with this company. But, LONG BEACH does take ADVANTAGE of most of us in a DISHONEST, DECEITFUL way because they know we need the loan and there is nothing we can do.
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