Repo practices

[Reinermom]

We have a truck that is financed in CA. We took over a lease with a equiptment leasing company (whom we pay and deal with) and apparently they pay another finance company for the same vehicle. We became deliquent, due to work constraints and financial problems, but we worked out payment plan with the lease company we deal with. Paying a large lump sum in November which he accepted. Spoke to him today and he stated it had been 2 months since payment had been made. I told him I could make a payment but he stated they were closed for the holidays until Jan 2. He said I could come in then to pay for Dec and January. Then at 10:30 pm tonight I rec'd a call from a " company" that was looking to repossess the truck at the request of the company that we deal with. I told him I spoke to him (leasing company etc) and to contact him. Didn't give him any info on where the truck was etc.

I know we have been deliquent but in lieu of the payment made in Nov and the agreement to make the payment Jan 2, can they still repo the truck? The contract doesn't mention anything about reposession just outrageous late fees etc.

I can't give you legal advice but I can tell you that each state has laws about vehicle reposession and they are available on the internet and many of them are very different in some respects from state to state. And I can also tell you that in many states and maybe even nationwide, vehicle creditors can repo for almost any reason whatever and often need no more excuse than that they feel insecure about their loan or their collateral. In otherwords, all they need to do is state they feel insecure and that's good enough reason to repossess.

I know of a lot of cases in which that was/is used by GMAC, FOMOCO and other big lenders to repo. One instance was a lady in Indiana who had purchased a nice van from GMAC and had made payments on the van for over 2 years and was never late in any payment and had even just made her last payment about 10 days before the repo. She loaned the van to her teen age daughter to go to the store a few blocks away and the kid managed to buy a beer from the store somehow. She pulled away from the store but didn't see the cop parked alongside the store and the cop pulled her over and arrested her for open container and alcohol in the possession of a minor. GMAC repoed the van immediately and would not consider letting the lady keep it under any circumstances.

While GMAC and FOMOCO are both real bad about doing things like that BankOne is even worse by far. You could not even begin to imagine how many millions of vehicles are repoed every year for whatever reason.

I know about one auto auction not far from where I live that has about 180 acres of land all paved in cement, not asphalt and it's usually almost chock full of repo vehicles, lease returns and dealer stuff. They usually sell around 1,000 vehicles each Tuesday and Thursday.

Then once a year they have what they call a party sale and they sell around 5,000 vehicles in one day. And auctions that size and even much larger are scattered all over the country. For instance, Kansas City, Dallas, Denver, Oklahoma City all have them and they are all over in just about that density.

So can they repo at the drop of a hat? You bet your boots they can.

[email]ceo@creditwrench.com[/email] [url]http://www.creditwrench.com[/url]

[Reinermom]

Thanks for the input. Will do some more homework with re: to CA Repo law.

Dear Reinermom,

Allow me to save you the trouble of doing that research and extract the answer teh bbaur's post for you:

Originally posted by bbauer
So can they repo at the drop of a hat? You bet your boots they can.

If you are late on your payments, they can absolutely repo the truck. I suggest you keep the truck away from the repossessor until you pay the balance tomorrow. Once you've paid the balance, confirm with the lender that they have faxed the repossession company notice to stop the repo - otherwise the truck could still be repo'd by mistake.

Good luck!

[email]JASON@LEGISLATOR.COM[/email]