Consumer complaint received 2021-09-05
Company: Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc.
State: CA
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Loan
Issue: Struggling to pay your loan
Sub-issue: Loan balance remaining after the vehicle is repossessed and sold

Complaint:
In my early XXXX 's I went to XXXX XXXX dealership at XXXX XXXX XXXX with {$5000.00} iton hand to buy a XXXX XXXX XXXX I had seen, orange manual transmission, great condition, and only {$8000.00}. 

I figured with a {$5000.00} down payment there would be no issue with my lack of credit history getting the remaining {$3000.00} financed. I was wrong. 

I was denied credit by XXXX XXXX and others, but somehow Santander NA, through it's subsidiary Chrysler Capital, was willing to give me a loan ... but only if I got a car FOUR TIMES as expensive. I was not given a chance to read the contract terms and made to believe that the gap insurance coverage was unimportant. 

I didn't know what gap insurance was. 

So when a few years later, I was in a not-at-fault accident that totalled the vehicle and XXXX refused to pay my claim due to a billing lapse of just one day, I was ruined. 

The repair shop agreed to take out a mechanic 's lien on the car so the lender would have to retrieve it since I was now destitute and apparently still like {$24000.00} in debt. 

They never did. So they legally no longer even owned the car after then, some point in XXXX or XXXX - the body shop did. But they still refused to forgive the loan or remove it from my credit. " I should have gotten the gap insurance coverage '' I was told. 

Years later, just last year I think, the then-attorney general, now US senator of my state XXXX XXXX agreed to a settlement with Santander for issuing ILLEGAL subprime loans like mine in the state of California and with other AGs in many other states. 

The financier did not make public their actual credit scoring metrics with which certain subprime loans were detirmined to be illegal, so neither the settlement administrator nor the Attorney General 's office were able to say if my loan was eligible for discharge and other relief, such as removal of adverse credit information from my files. 

I contacted Santander 's office of the ombudsman but was refused any support in English from that office, upon request. This was after countless failed attempts to resolve this with their subsidiary 's subsidiary Chrysler Capital by mail and phone. 

The data was actually supposed to be gone from my credit already before the attorney General settlement, but it had not been done and still hasn't. This ruined my life and cost me the opportunity of finishing college, and forget about attending the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX as I had once dreamed - my late uncle spoke there as a guest XXXX  occasionally so that was the closest I got. 

I now live on the streets in XXXX XXXX where the homeless agency is prohibited by ordinance from actually directly giving anybody housing, so there is basically no hope for me unless I move, which I can't afford to do because of my ruined credit. 

The effects of this loan default, illegal as it was, compounded across my other financial accounts and created a domino effect wherein the inability to access capital and lending resources created by Santander 's illegal adverse credit data furnishing made it gradually more and more impossible to meet my numerous other financial obligations. 

I directly attribute this loan as a primary trigger for the downward spiral my life took from the point of that accident forward, ultimately leading me to lose my mind and become hospitalized with suicidal psychosis in XXXX, after which which I was so depressed I could no longer work ( I have not yet been able to secure XXXX  and SSI due to my homelessness and the total failure in local authorities to conduct effective case management outreach ) as well as leading to two separate suicide attempts and hospitalizations. The things I saw while homeless, and the constant danger on the streets of XXXX XXXX gave me XXXX and worsened my XXXX further - being invisible can do that too. 

I can point to about three then-not world-shaking events that I can directly attribute ny decline from an early high school graduate with a XXXX GPA, a girlfriend I wanted to marry, a full time job at a financial institution with stock options ( if I had been there just a bit longer ) one since absorbed by XXXX nonetheless, and a stable group of friends to lean on for support - to where I am now, a dingy hotel room in XXXX without working plumbing and a backed up toilet that I only get to enjoy for another 20 minutes before I am ushered back out onto the streets where there is nowhere to bathe and nowhere civilized to use the toilet, and crackheads run rampant stealing copper like it was still the awful XXXX XXXX era. 

I am XXXX, was born into an upper middle class family, and have an IQ of XXXX - not that the last bit means much of anything but that people did not expect me to end up here, and now that I am, everyone assumes that I got into drugs or something - that this is my fault, I should be able to pull myself up with my youthful energy. They don't know that youth is long dead, killed by the horrors of having open eyes and empathy on the streets of LA. 

So here I am, penniless and slowly XXXX on the streets of XXXX XXXX ; Where nobody cares and nobody offering help actually has anything to offer. I can't leave and I can't stay. 

All so some billionaire XXXX could have a few more sub-prime auto loans on his portfolio. 

And my country my city my county my state - all did nothing to protect me from it, never occuring to anyone that I may have had something terrific to give back to America if I had not been so abused and ignored by it the very moment I finally knew I needed help to present. 

{>= $1,000,000}

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation