Consumer complaint received 2020-10-15
Company: Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc.
State: FL
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Lease
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Problem with personal statement of dispute

Complaint:
I entered into my lease contract in XX/XX/XXXX with Chrysler Capital and immediately established the auto-pay option with e-statements. As my payment history shows, I have made each original monthly payment of ( {$440.00} ) with no issues from XX/XX/XXXX until XX/XX/XXXX as I was set-up on an auto-pay and paperless plan. However, due to a county tax increase, the payment figure of ( {$440.00} ) originally established by my lender at the beginning of my lease was no longer fulfilling the new minimum payment amount of ( {$450.00} ) due, resulting in a ( {$5.00} ) shortage, which then accrued over several months before resulting in a negative balance in  XXXX of XXXX, and carrying over to XXXX of XXXX. Once I was aware that there was a late payment status on my account from reviewing my personal credit report, I immediately contacted Chrysler Capital and paid my accumulated monthly fees of ( {$75.00} ), and my auto-payment has since been adjusted to ( {$450.00} ). As my payment history shows, a payment has been withdrawn every month on or before the due date since my account was opened, but the adjustment issue has affected my payment status and has been reported to the credit bureaus as two separate 30-day late payments (  XX/XX/XXXX & XX/XX/XXXX ). After several conversations with the dispute department and the executive office I was able to find out that I did not receive a written notification of this necessary adjustment, nor did I receive an email message to explain the necessary steps to correct this adjustment, therefore I had no formal written knowledge that the recurring payments set-up on my auto-pay continued to result in a due balance of ( {$5.00} ) each month until my account showed a late payment status. Also, the statements attached show that my account status was still considered current while there was a past due balance owed and no messages are documented other than Account is currently set up on recurring payments so how would someone know there is an issue? I was also told that the shortage began in XX/XX/XXXX, however no attempt was made to contact me about this issue until XX/XX/XXXX and Chrysler Capital stated a voicemail message was left. While I understand that a phone call was made in XX/XX/XXXX in an attempt to get a hold of me, I don't understand why it took 11 months for Chrysler Capital initiate contact. And furthermore, most official business requires some form of written notice, or certified letter, or notarized document and yet the company did not send me any type of written or emailed notice to inform me that there was a problem with my account. Once I noticed the problem, I immediately contacted the Chrysler Capital to make the necessary adjustment & paid my accumulated fees, however my account status is still reported as having two late payments. I have since requested the dispute department to look into this on XX/XX/XXXX and requested that a goodwill adjustment be made on my account and was told the company does not do goodwill adjustments to credit reporting whatsoever, which alone is a little unreasonable considering the company is in the business of using credit to approve automobile leases. Then I sent a letter to the dispute department on XX/XX/XXXX formally requesting an adjustment be made to my account if there was no written attempt to contact me, and a copy of this letter was emailed to the executive office and forwarded to the dispute department, and again no reply had been sent nor an acknowledgement of receiving the email. If an automatic payment collected in the company 's system is slightly less than the amount due in the system, but it is still collected on or before the due date, shouldn't there be some other reporting status other than a late payment status, perhaps a negative balance status, illustrating that a payment was still made on-time, however the payment still resulted in a negative balance. This way lenders would not see this as an inability to make a payment and rather an accounting adjustment was needed, which in my situation, was the exact case due to the county tax increase. My ability to get funded in the future should not be affected by a county tax increase and auto-pay system that has no alerts, or sends no automatic communication when there is an issue at hand. If an alert was illustrated somewhere in my account, or written notification was sent to me within maybe a 90-day period of when the shortage began then I could have avoided this situation all together. And, I would think that a county tax increase affecting my payment status would be grounds for written notification to be sent to me via email and direct mail to have a copy for my records that the company made several attempts to contact me, and giving me the necessary time to make the adjustment  before my credit is affected for years. I am in my XXXX XXXX and have never had one late payment on my credit report, and I am trying to refinance my home before this covid-19 mess alters lending requirements, and the only thing that is stopping me from getting approved is this very recent " Late-Payment '' status on my credit report. I have also been told by other consumers that this has been a problem over the last year and other companies are waiving these fees in my county, and not reporting this to the credit bureaus at all as it must be categorized as an accounting issue and not a late-payment issue. If this late-payment status remains on my credit report I will likely not get approved for my home refinance and will have trouble getting any sort  of credit approval for years, and in my opinion this all could have been avoided with written notification long before my account showed a late-payment. And to add salt to the wound, my account that has since been updated to the ( {$450.00} ) higher monthly recurring payment is now showing that I am paying too much per month, as a matter of fact, Ive now been paying around {$12.00} more than I should be per month since XX/XX/XXXX as the attached statements show I only owe a minimum of ( {$440.00} ), again no communication, no message on my statement regarding this overage, which also means that the ( {$5.00} ) increase that originally caused this entire ordeal has thus been negated. So, from what I can gather, Chrysler Capital is in the business of thinking its perfectly ok to send statements with inaccurate information, as the attached copies will show, even if the inaccurate information has a negative effect on the consumer. As the attached statements illustrate, there are several months that show a Current status for the Account status as of statement date while simultaneously showing a past due balance, and providing no message whatsoever under the Account Alerts & Important Messages section. Ive been told by the executive department that these statements are my written notice of my account issues, but the information on the statements is not accurate or clear as to what is going on with my account, nor are there messages in the section specifically implemented for Alerts & Important messages on several e-statements that show a past due balance, so how is the consumer able to get a clear picture of a problem so it can be resolved before its already too late? Either the department that processes the e-statements needs to change their processes and take responsibility or consumers shouldnt be responsible for inaccurate information that is said to be written proof of a situation. Also, there should be some sort of regard for this type of situation where a consumer clearly has the ability to meet their financial obligation but a clerical error has caused a past due balance before reporting to the credit bureaus as a negative mark on a credit report lasts for years, while a accounting adjustment issue can be handled in less than 30 seconds if there is proper communication protocols in place to alert the consumer that a problem actually exists. There is absolutely no point in being on an auto-payment plan if these types of situations are still able to occur. Chrysler Capital 's lack of clear & concise communication with me as a  consumer has ultimately created a negative reporting status on my personal credit report, thus still negatively impacting my credit worthiness for up to 2 years.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation