Consumer complaint received 2020-05-13
Company: CREDIT ACCEPTANCE CORPORATION
State: ME
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Loan
Issue: Struggling to pay your loan
Sub-issue: Denied request to lower payments

Complaint:
Exactly one year ago, my husband and I purchased a vehicle and have it financed through Credit Acceptance Corporation. We have had our account with CAC set up on auto pay so that payments are automatically deducted from our bank account. We have NEVER missed ONE SINGLE payment. However, back in XXXX, upon the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, my husband was furloughed from his job and my work ( I am XXXX ) significantly dried up. As a result of this, we were unable to make our vehicle payments. I immediately contacted CAC and they disabled our auto pay so that no payments would come out of our bank account and they assured me that NO collection activity would occur because of this pandemic. I was told to simply call back when we were able to resume our normal payments and to set up an arrangement for any past due amount that we acquire. I requested that they simply defer the missed payments to the end of our loan, but they outright refused, which made no sense to me. Fast forward to today, XX/XX/2020, I reached back out to CAC to inform them that we are not ready to turn our automatic payments back on to resume our regular payments. I once again asked if they could defer the payment that we missed to the end of our loan and they told me that they " do not have the technology to be able to do this. '' Whatever. I had them add {$10.00} additional to each of our biweekly payments to go towards the past due. After setting our automatic payments back up, I received a response to an email that I had to CAC 's Office of the President. The individual who emailed me is XXXX XXXX XXXX, Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of the CAC Regulatory Compliance department. She informed me that our credit report freeze was only good until XX/XX/XXXX, at which point we would be reported as 60 days late on our credit reports. I'm sorry, but this goes TOTALLY against the federal CARES Act, which states that lenders MAY NOT report consumers who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as late as long as their payments were current at the start of the pandemic and as long as they work out some sort of payment arrangement, WHICH WE HAVE DONE!!!!!!!!!!!! I have pointed this out to Ms. XXXX, who now absolutely refuses to respond to any of my emails. My husband and I have worked VERY hard to increase our credit scores well over 100 points over the course of this past 10-12 months and we will NOT have it completely sabotaged by these predators, who REFUSE to abide by the laws and regulations set forth by the CARES Act. We have worked FAR too hard to have our finally GOOD credit ratings destroyed by these predatory criminals, who are clearly making up their own rules as they go. We are in the process of refinancing our home and will NOT allows these scammers to ruin that for us. We are a FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE couple, who ALWAYS make our payments and IMMEDIATELY contacted CAC as soon as we knew that we were going to have trouble making our payments due to this pandemic. We also VERY quickly ( within about 6 weeks ) RESUMED our payments. It is COMPLETELY unfair, morally wrong, and ILLEGAL to punish hard-working, honest consumers who have been so heavily impacted by this pandemic!!! We WILL be filing a lawsuit against Credit Acceptance Corporation for any damaged that we incur by such negative credit reporting, and a copy of this complaint has also been forwarded to the Maine Attorney General 's Office of Consumer Credit Protection.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation