Consumer complaint received 2021-09-28
Company: ALLY FINANCIAL INC.
State: NY
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Loan
Issue: Problems at the end of the loan or lease
Sub-issue: Problem related to refinancing

Complaint:
Beginning of last month, I called Ally Financial XXXX to get a loan to payoff my lease. I informed them that my nephew and I were looking to submit a joint application because he is in need of a vehicle and is building his credit, but he has never obtained an auto loan. 

We provided all of our personal information ( ssn, income, addresses, etc. ) asked by the Ally representative. The Ally representative then said that if we were to get a loan jointly that I would be required to be on the auto insurance policy which I am not sure why that mattered. At this point, I felt reluctant to go any further with the application because we were not calling Ally for information on auto insurance coverage. However, my nephew was still hopeful and anxious, so we continued with the application. During the call, I told the Ally representative he was wrong because as long as one party ( borrower or co-borrower ) is listed on the Title they can get sole auto insurance coverage. The Ally representative placed me on hold to check if what I said was legit only to return to the call to tell me I was right which was a complete waste of our time. Thereafter, the Ally representative asked a series of questions pertaining to the amount we were looking to finance ; he was able to pull the payoff amount for my lease directly from Ally 's system he said, then he asked if we would like to include a down payment which we said yes, roughly {$2000.00} or {$3000.00} is what I believe we stated. The Ally representative did indicate that a down payment was not required, so we asked for preliminary figures for both ( down payment and no down payment ). My nephew and I determined that putting money down was the best route based on our financial needs and told the Ally representative that we would like to move forward. The Ally representative read a lengthy disclosure about pulling our credit that required us to give our consent in order to proceed which we did. The Ally representative stated he would submit our application to underwriting for review, he said they ( underwriting ) will review our credit and income to make a credit decision. I did mention to the Ally representative that my neighbor bumped into the passenger door while the car was in park and the vehicle is scheduled to get repairs in late XXXX because that's the soonest XXXX XXXX could find an appointment slot in our area. 

A few days later, the Ally representative called back asking me if I would like to get a loan without adding my nephew and he was alluding to me proceeding with the application as a straw purchase which by definition, is an illegal transaction as I had clearly explained our loan purpose upfront. The Ally representative asked if my nephew has credit established and my response to him was to pull our credit reports and see for yourself as I thought that was the whole purpose of gathering our information for underwriting 's review. The Ally representative said they at Ally didn't want to do a hard credit report pull only to find out that my nephew doesn't have enough credit to prove loan worthiness and the pull would lower our credit scores, like they were doing us a favor. 

I felt so disgusted and discriminated against because none of the expectations that were stated upfront nor the terms and conditions explained in the verbal disclosure ( s ) actually took place. To this day, we never received a declination letter from Ally nor was our credit report ever pulled. To my understanding, this is a Regulation B violation. From the start of the call, it seemed like Ally was looking to find reasons to not submit our application and/or intimidate us to not move forward with pursuing a loan with them and I never missed a payment with Ally. We provided our information in good faith and under the impression that the application process would be seamless. 

Today, I got a letter in the mail from Ally stating to turn the car in or they'll recover it. I called the phone number provided on the letter and I have to pay for a lease extension until the car repairs are completed and have agreed to keep the vehicle insured at least until the repairs are completed, but I am not happy with Ally at all.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation