I am a reservist in the National Guard, and I was called to active duty in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in January. I submitted a copy of my orders to Chrysler Financial by the end of January to apply for protection under the Soldier's and Sailor's Civil relief act (50 USC App. 501), for the interest rate reduction & to have the monthly payment recalculated.
I received a phone call from them about a week later stating that they had lowered the interest rate & monthly payment, and had sent a letter stating the same. When I returned from Afghanistan, I found out that they had also stopped sending statements to my house, and that had caused my wife to get behind a couple of payments. When I called them to find out what had happened, they informed me that due to my status as a deployed reservist, they had placed me in an 'exception status', and would no longer have statements mailed to my house.
When I asked why I was not notified of this when the CSR called me, or in the letter I received, I was subjected to their party line of "well, you have an obligation to pay your bills". This was actually the second time I had been deployed while I was a customer of Chrysler financial, and the first time, I continued to receive statements. When I brought this up the the CSR, I was confronted with threats of repossession, and being dragged into court for being a 'deadbeat'.
After I had settled up the account, I again tried to contact Chrysler Financial to find out what happened, and now they are telling me that because I made a couple of payments online in I was automatically enrolled in the online statement program they run, and a stipulation of that was the fact that statements would not be mailed out.
The problem with that explanation is that I received statements up until January when I submitted a copy of my active-duty orders. When I informed them of that, they responded with the line "we don't have much experience dealing with military customers", to which I responded that I submitted orders no more than 18 months prior for a previous deployment, and that went off without any problems. Now, they don't even take my calls; every time I try to call them, I get hung up on as soon as a CSR gets my account number. This stinks of unfair/deceptive trade practices; anyone out there with some legal know how have any advice?
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